A method for substantially reducing the contribution of dense regions of an object while less dense regions of the object are being processed in a laminography blurring system. The method comprises the steps of positioning an x-ray source with a moving fan beam on one side of the object; positioning a row of x-ray detectors on the side of the object opposite that of the x-ray source; sequentially emitting a plurality of x-ray fan beams along an x-ray source line and directed through a focused pixel of the object to the row of x-ray detectors; sampling the x-ray detectors once for each of the fan beams for a total of it samples of intensity I.sub.i; determining the maximum intensity I.sub.max from the samples I.sub.i; choosing a parameter P greater than one; retaining only those samples I.sub.i that are greater than or equal to I.sub.max/P; summing the retained samples; and normalizing the resultant sum. Normalizing can include multiplying the sum by the total number of samples divided by the number of retained samples.
CROSS-REFERENCES TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
The applicant wishes to claim the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/538,041, dated Jan. 20, 2004 for A NEW ALGORITHM FOR LAMINOGRAPHY: A METHOD TO AVOID THE PROBLEM OF THE DENSE OBJECT(S) BLURRING OUT LESS DENSE OBJECTS in the names of Martin Annis and Richard Adler.
The present invention is an apparatus and method for acquiring an image of an object and its contents from a stream of objects as they are transported by a conveyor. The image of the object is acquired by projecting a beam of electromagnetic radiation through the object and converting the resultant electromagnetic radiation by a sensor. The sensor accumulates the resultant electromagnetic radiation over a period of time that is a pre-defined relationship or function of the spatial relationship between the position of the object and the beam of electromagnetic radiation. A setup means is provided which allows a user to pre-define a set of constants in the pre-defined relationship.
