Last  
Updated 03/08/2002

### Falcon's Argonne Experience  
  
> My task at [Argonne\  
> National Laboratory](http://www.anl.gov/) in Illinois was to develop an application  
> to run an X-Ray/CT system. In an X-Ray/CT system, you take side shots  
> of an object and then reconstruct a view of the image. For example, the  
> image below was not photographed from above, but was instead scanned  
> from the side, rotating the image a small degree each time. These side  
> shots were then combined to produce the below view. The reason that  
> this can be done is because an X-Ray image shows the density of the  
> object being scanned. Using complex algorithms, these density graphs  
> can then be combined to produce a 3D likeness of the image.  
>  
> The environment that I used for development was LabView  
> 4.01. The camera was an 8-bit Sony CCD. The frame grabber card was a  
> PCI-IMAQ (image acquisition) card from National Instruments. The  
> platform was a Pentium 150 with 128MB RAM. The stage was controlled by  
> a Parker Compumotor system and had four axes of motion. The OS was  
> Windows 95.  
>  
> The image reconstruction was handled by existing routines  
> that had been written in FORTRAN 77 and had been recompiled for the  
> 32-bit OS.  
>  
> Here is the first composite image that was produced on the  
> completed system. The object was a plastic composite that had been  
> produced on a rapid prototype machine. The design is the official ANL  
> logo.