Radiation imaging device with irregular rectangular shape and extraoral dental imaging system therefrom

A radiation imaging device, comprising:

• a single imaging sensor comprised of a plurality of individual semiconductor pixel detectors positioned adjacently in an array defining an active area responsive to x-rays, each detector composed of pixels,
• each said individual detector having a rectangular shape and together defining an overall active area with a length y and a width x;
• and
• at least one detector module on which said individual detectors are mounted, wherein,
• said individual detectors comprise at least two individual semiconductor detectors juxtaposed next to each other with an average physical gap in the range of 0.005 mm to 0.4 mm between the outside-most edges of the detectors,
• an average physical gap is defined between each set of adjacent edges of adjacent ones of said individual detectors,
• each of said average physical gaps of all of said plural individual detectors is up to 400% of a pixel size of the pixels of the individual detectors.

An extra-oral dental x-ray imaging system, comprising:

• a. an x-ray source adapted for generating x-rays for exposure of such x-rays to an object to be imaged;
• b. an x-ray imaging device adapted for producing multiple frames from a single x-ray imaging device during at least part of the exposure, said x-ray imaging device comprising a plurality of individual semiconductor pixel detectors in an array defining an active area responsive to x-rays, each detector composed of pixels, said active area having a rectangular shape with length y and a width x, with the width x having at least two different values for corresponding ranges along the length y, an average physical gap is defined between each set of adjacent edges of adjacent ones of said individual detectors, each of said average physical gaps of all of said plural individual detectors is up to 400% of a pixel size of the pixels of the individual detectors;
• c. at least one rotational axis around which at least one of the x-ray source and imaging device rotates along a spline, the axis being located between the x-ray source focal point and the x-ray imaging device;
• and
• a processor to process the frames of a single exposure to compose selectively at least two of a group of elements,
• the elements comprising
• (a) a predetermined dental panoramic layer image,
• (b) a local part of a non-predetermined dental panoramic layer image,
• (c) a transverse slice to a local part of a dental panoramic layer image;
• and
• (d) a 3-D reconstruction of a volume corresponding to some local part of a dental panoramic layer.