Applications of optical principles in clinical X-ray visualization

•Key words X-ray Optics and Virtual Optics have been included.•Author’s own works have been included in the last 2 paragraphs.•Virtual Optics has been explained in terms of author’s work in these paragraphs.

Clinical X-ray imaging uses optical engineering principles. This includes principles of quantum optics, laws of geometric optics and virtual optics in 3-D visualization. Quantum optics plays a major role in describing X-ray photon distribution and selection of this distribution for specific clinical protocols. Geometric optics explains parallax in image stitching. Mitigating parallax requires application of optical engineering principles in imaging system design. Virtual optics used in 3-D image visualization applies laws of geometric optics in surface rendering and maximum intensity projection. Application of optical engineering in clinical X-ray system design is pervasive, even though it may not have been recognized as such.