TABLE OF CONTENTS Worldwide synchrotron radiation facilities [1] provide an extraordinary kind of X-ray source, which offers a large variety of application in several fields such as material science, crystallography, microspectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and more recently a variety of medical applications as for example are described in [2].
The main feature of these sources is the wide and continuous energy spectrum providing a very high photon flux over an energy range up to some 50 keV or even higher. Moreover, the beam comprises a high natural collimation at least in the vertical direction and a high degree of coherence in both, space and time. In the horizontal direction one can produce a large area, fan-like photon beam shape.
All the unique features mentioned in combination with sophisticated optics make synchrotron sources well suited instruments, e.g. for medical applications. Thus during the past years several synchrotron radiation (SR) facilities have developed dedicated medical beamlines. Those make not only use of the excellent source characteristics but also from fact that the high intensity SR spectrum allows one to select and to tune monochromatic photon beams with a very narrow energy bandwidth. Besides, the laminar geometry reduces scattered radiation and thus avoids image blurring. As a consequence an enhancement of the image quality is observed while the dose is conserved or is even reduced at the same time. This is...
