Safeline X-ray Dual Energy Technology

Dual energy x-ray inspection systems use advanced discrimination algorithms to detect two different x-ray energy levels. By comparing the two energy levels, dual energy systems can identify material information within a product, largely removing the product noise, allowing contaminants to be detected more easily and more accurately.

In contrast, single energy systems produce a single x-ray image that is compared to a pre-determined acceptance standard. If the material information does not match the acceptance standard, the product is rejected. 

Dual energy x-ray technology is well suited to the same applications as single energy. However, dual energy inspection is also recommended for low-density, hard to find contaminants such as non-calcified bone, low mineral glass or rubber all located within complex, overlapping shapes that have a mixed non-uniform density.

Learn more:

• How to Choose Between Single or Dual Energy X-ray Inspection Systems

There are two types of dual energy: Standard Dual Energy X-ray Detection and Advanced Dual Energy X-ray Detection.

Standard dual energy uses a standard x-ray generator coupled with dual energy detector hardware. The dual energy detector allows for the comparison of different materials within a product being inspected. This material data, together with our advanced image analysis software, leads to improved contamination detection performance for overlapping products, or with products with low-density contaminants.

Advanced dual energy uses a standard x-ray generator coupled with dual energy detector hardware featuring a unique diode design architecture. This unique diode design architecture enables the collection of even more detailed data about the different materials within the product being inspected. More data allows for more detailed image processing by the image analysis software, leading to an even greater contamination detection performance over standard dual energy.

Standard and Advanced Dual Energy X-ray Inspection (known as DXD+) does not reduce your False Reject Rate (FRR). DXD+ improves the detection of hard-to-find low-density contaminants within overlapping shapes that have a mixed non-uniform density. However, we cannot guarantee to find every physical contaminant and we cannot guarantee that we will not find a ‘false’ contaminant. We can optimize the DXD+ inspection software to reduce the False Reject Rate (FRR) but this rate may be no better or worse than the FRR for a conventional single energy x-ray system.

Dual Energy’s main benefit is providing more precise contamination detection for hard-to-find physical contaminants in traditionally challenging applications such as pasta, frozen fruit, chicken bones, and other overlapping, complex products that have proven to be difficult applications for single energy x-ray inspection systems to manage.