Fujifilm FCR XG-1 X-ray Image Scanner Teardown (3 part series)

[Mads Barnkob]

Part 1: Teardown of a Fujifilm FCR XG-1 x-ray image scanner / digitizer. Also known as Computerized Radiography (CR), it fulfills the job of scanning a x-ray exposed image plate with a laser beam and extract each pixel illumination with a photo multiplier tube setup. It can scan 72 plate per hour with a maximum resolution of 7080 X 9480 in 12 bits per pixel gray scale.

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All pictures can be found here: https://kaizerpowerelectronics.dk/teardown/fujifilm-fcr-xg-1-x-ray-image-scanner-teardown-part-1-of-3/

The scanner is normally delivered as a standalone system with a single PC for operation.



The unit I found was stripped for all outer plastic parts, user interfaces and the computer compartment was empty of cards, leaving only bare bus mainboard behind. Teardown and reverse engineering of the PMT assembly will be covered in part 3.



The mainboard or bus backplane has board names printed on to it. I was able to find out that the CPU12A board uses two Altera Flex FPGAs in a main (machine control) / sub (image handling) CPU setup and has a SMSC Feast FD LAN91C100FDQFP Ethernet controller for 100 Mbit networking. It uses a VxWorks RTOS with a default login cr-ir346 and password is cr-ir346 as well. Great security there!  Default IP address 172.16.1.10 which seems a little unusual.



Here is closeup pictures of stepper motor driver boards, mechanical parts, power supply for the photomultiplier tube and belt driven casette feeder. It also features a few badly translated warning labels, half of them does not make any sense.



The power supply is a Lambda / Densei-Lambda model Alpha 4000 with model name MA4000256J. It is a modular power supply with 5 output slots and this particular configuration has outputs at 5V, 15V and 24V at different current ratings. Each power supply module is isolated from the others.



The scanning laser is packaged inside a black plastic enclosure and will be covered in part 2. There seems to be a external power supply /conditioning board for a stable power supply near the laser module itself.

[Mads Barnkob]

Part 2: Teardown of the laser scanner module from a Fujifilm FCR XG-1 x-ray image scanner / digitizer. Also known as Computerized Radiography (CR), it fulfills the job of scanning a x-ray exposed image plate with a laser beam and extract each pixel illumination with a photo multiplier tube setup. It can scan 72 plate per hour with a maximum resolution of 7080 X 9480 in 12 bits per pixel gray scale.

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Fuji's photostimulable phosphor is deposited on a flexible polyester film support with grain size about 5 micrometers, and is described as "barium fluorobromide containing a trace amount of bivalent europium as a luminescence center". Europium is a divalent cation that replaces barium to create a solid solution. When Eu²⁺ ions are struck by ionizing radiation, they lose an additional electron to become Eu³⁺ ions. These electrons enter the conduction band of the crystal and become trapped in the bromine ion empty lattice of the crystal, resulting in a metastable state that is higher in energy than the original condition. A lower-frequency light source that is insufficient in energy to create more Eu³⁺ ions can return the trapped electrons to the conduction band. As these mobilized electrons encounter Eu³⁺ ions, they release a blue-violet 400 nm luminescence. wikipedia



Inside the laser module there is a laser diode to the right, rotating mirror in the middle, output lenses and a receiving sensor to the left. The laser light path is illustrated with red lines for the 633 nm red laser and the green lines represent the start of line of a new scan. Pink is the feedback from the laser diode to its own power supply / control.



The laser diode sits in a holder that has two adjustment screws and has a port to adjust focal point of the lens that sits inside the housing. The PCB also has a photodiode for feedback of the laser intensity.



The rotating mirror is a polygon scanner motor which is a polished metal surface sitting on top of a high speed / precision fluid bearing motor.



The output lens has a clear blue filter coating in all places but the corner that corresponds to the light path that goes to the receiving sensor mirror and optics in the left side of the module.