When you have your X-Ray tube, and want to make X-Ray for your X-Ray scanner or whatever. Then you get electrons from the cathode, which hit the anode, and from that produce a spectrum of X-Rays due to Bremsstrahlung, and characteristic lines from electrons jumping from shell to shell.
This gives the continuous spectrum, and the sharp peaks from the characteristic lines.
My question is then: When you do an X-Ray, of a leg, or something, is it all the X-Rays that you use, both from bremsstrahlung and the characteristic lines, or do you somehow remove the continuous spectrum, or something, and only use the characteristic line X-Reay ?
Best Answer
Both the continuous spectrum and the characteristic lines are used; however, in some cases a filter such as aluminum can be used to remove low energy xrays that are not needed, so as to reduce xray exposure, as explained here: http://www.cyberphysics.co.uk/topics/medical/Xray.html