Prickly Pear X-ray

Nice job, Tonia. It looks like the background fill may have painted over parts of a few of the spines. FYI, this kind of image can be posted in Flora.

I'm lucky to be in the opposite position as you: my current supervisor doesn't mind me using the equipment for these images, my last manager who just left in May probably wouldn't have been as open to the idea. Do you think if you show these older images to your new boss, he/she would change his/her mind?

Rob, I'm not sure if I can change their minds or not. I've even offered to buy my own film! I'll keep working on it though, I think various forms of diagnostic imaging on non-human subjects yeilds some really interesting results! Btw, if you check out my portfolio I have posted a lobster x-ray as well (yes, the lobster was already dead).

Very nice Tonia. I hope you get to keep experimenting.

Cool lobster in your portfolio. I should go look for some crawdad shells in the local wetlands. So you are still using film? That changes things, though if you are offering to pay for the film, then I don't see the problem. We went digital a few years ago, and finally got digital mammo and a new CT last year, so I can now "play" a bit.

Rob, no we are using CR but we do have film printers at some of our locations. Just out of curiosity, how do you copy the digital images from your PACS system (I realize they are all different).

For the CT pumpkins, I burned a disc off of the workstation; same with the mammo unit I just had the mammo gal burn straight from the computer. For the few CR images I have done, I used PACS to burn a disc with the images the same way I would if I were sending a disc with a patient. I export in dicom format, though the PACS can be set to export jpgs. I am currently using the free program ImageJ to view the dicom files at home; it is a bit rough but works for what I need atm. I am glad to hear that you aren't stuck in the film ages :).

Very cool, Tonia.

Tonia:
So glad to see you posting floral radiography work! I am feeling a little lonely for a time. So interesting to see the inner vein channels in the cactus. The exposure looks great. As pointed out by Rob, some of the needles are partly covered over by the fill. It is tough to process subjects with hairs and spikes poking out of the edges. I think you could tweak the shadow and highlights a little more to get the vein to stand out more. The base and the joint look very opaque so a blend of two different kV exposures may overcome this.

Look forward to seeing more of these.

Gary, thank you for your suggestions. It was very difficult to get all of the spines in there, I ended up using a wacom table which helped but I may have been loosing my patience at that point! (Love to capture images, not process them). I like your idea for using 2 different exposures to maximize Kv penetration and detail. I only hope I can convince my bosses to let me do more of these from time to time!