A line-focus collimator with a field of view of uniform thickness

A new line-focus x-ray collimator features a field of view (FOV) with uniform thickness in the near field between the collimator and focal line. General design equations were developed and then constrained to define such a uniform FOV. A prototype collimator was experimentally evaluated using a Compton backscatter imaging technique. The full-width-tenth-max (FWTM) thickness, measured at 420 locations in the near field, showed good uniformity (1.51 +/- 0.06 cm) and closely approximated the nominal design thickness (1.8 cm).