Making Images And Videos Using A Diy Fluoroscopic X-ray

[Jozef] has been playing around with X-rays. Specifically, he’s been using his own setup to make fluoroscopic images, a type of x-ray photography that allows for video images to be made. If you’ve ever seen those x-ray movies of someone swallowing, that’s fluoroscopy (we’re fans of the other oddities like this video of a skeleton playing the trumpet).

The image above is [Jozef’s] own hand. He exposed it for about one second, filming the event from the opposite side of a Curix Ortho Regular Screen. The screen fluoresces when hit by the particles from an x-ray tube he picked up on eBay. This particular event dosed his hand with about 10 rads. We have no clue as to what levels are safe (and a quick search didn’t enlighten us) so talk amongst yourselves in the comments section.

Of course [Jozef] didn’t stop with still images, he put a turntable between the tube and the screen and took a bunch of x-ray videos of revolving electronics. You’ll find the video embedded after the break.

84 thoughts on “Making Images And Videos Using A Diy Fluoroscopic X-ray

  1. I’m not going to harp on the safety aspect of this, but I’m surprised that no one has commented on the video of the exposures. The white dots and “noise” in the image are coming from X-rays striking the CCD.

    The same thing was seen on the video feeds from robots at the Fukushima site, radiation was causing noise interference in the video feed.

    I’ll agree with lots of people here, use a dosimeter, use a remote, use lead shielding, but please take some kind of precautions to prevent you from irradiating something attached to you.

    Unrelated: Why the heck am I having to create a WordPress account to post now?

  2. There is an increased risk of brain tumours and haematological malignancy in physicians exposed to fluroscopic sources of radiation. I knew a nice spinal surgeon who died of multiple myeloma in his late 40s a few years back.

    Although immediate deterministic effects of the radiation exposure in this experiment appear to have been avoided, the operator has probably increased his stochastic risk of malignancy.

    Your cells work hard to defy entropy for ~80 years by importing energy, maintaining order, and exporting heat and waste – bombarding them with x-rays is not generally conducive to this mission!!

  3. I’m a little more spooked by the completely unshielded tube. Granted xrays generally travel in a straight line, there is bound to be significant scatter from that setup.

    Living in kalifornia, I see regulation to the point of grinding commerce to a halt. I do not wish to live in a bubble wrapped society.

    If ya want to fry your nads, be my guest.

    That being said, fluoroscopy generally involves much longer exposures. I don’t care to be near any fluoroscopic procedures at all. Six feet+/- is considered ok for a portable film.

    Anyone with a decent vacuum pump and suitable glass blowing skills can build there very own tube. Party on. Just don’t aim it at the neighbors or the kids. I’m going to go troll ebay now.

  4. I am joining the chorus of horrified readers. This project is like somebody submitting a recipe for waffles covered in mercury – beyond any reasonable level of stupidity. Even OR flouro machines don’t have a linear radiation pattern. This is almost certainly going to cause health issues throughout the body. I sure hope this guy doesn’t live near other people/animals or children! This reminds me of that guy who build the nuclear reactor in his back yard, at least this dumbass isn’t risking a meltdown with his “hobby”.

  5. I noted your comment about the e-bay x-ray tube as the source. I hope it had a low energy cutoff filter.

    A tube with a berylium window or a thin aluminium window will have substantial low energy emission will get absorbed in the skin and has low penetration depth. It is mostly this low energy deposition in a thin penetration depth that gives issues with skin death and such. They found out the hard way in the old days.

    In medical application there is usually a 2mm thick Al filter plate to remove this low end radiation and leave only the high energy gammas do the imaging. Still not safe if you do not know deposition rates and cross sections.

    Please use pre-cooked chicken or frozen fish and such for a test if you want to see bones. Not live subjects that can do without the radiation burden. remember ” as low as resonnably possible….” moto.

    Have fun with your setup but safety first.

  6. Just a quick note: couple of years ago one crazy Russian guy did the same, and also made few X-Ray videos of his hand. He had soft X-Ray which are very well absorbed by tissue (unlike much harder X-Rays in medical applications), and in 1 week after experiments got to hospital after his hand started to swell. He is fine now though.

    After that he removed all videos across the internet.

  7. About the only application I can think of for homebrew X-rays is breaking into combination locks, or possibly “stress testing” of memory chips to test long term reliability to ambient radiation.
    ie if 0.01Gy for 1 minute causes a failure if repeated 2 times then the same chip should last for at least 40 years.

    someone should “torture test” a 32GB x4 SD and compare it with an identical 32GB from a reputable manufacturer to see just how bad the FakeFlash ™ chips are.

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