The present invention is related to high power X-
ray sources, in particular to those ones that are equipped with rotating X-
ray anodes capable of delivering a much higher short time peak power than conventional rotating X-
ray anodes according to the prior art. The herewith proposed design principle thereby aims at overcoming thermal limitation of peak power by allowing extremely fast rotation of the
anode and by introducing a lightweight material with high
thermal conductivity (2) in the region adjacent to the focal track material (4). The extremely fast rotation is enabled by providing sections of the rotary
anode disk made of anisotropic high
specific strength materials with high
thermal stability (1, 3, 6) which will be specifically adapted to the high stresses building up when the
anode is operated, as for example
fiber-reinforced
ceramic materials. An X-ray
system equipped with a
high peak power anode according to the present invention will be capable of high speed
image acquisition with
high resolution and
high coverage. Such a high-speed rotary anode disk can advantageously be applied in X-ray tubes for material inspection or
medical radiography, for X-ray imaging applications which are needed for acquiring image data of moving objects in real-time, such as e.g. in the scope of cardiac CT, or for any other X-ray imaging application that requires high-speed image
data acquisition. According to a further exemplary embodiment, the invention is directed to a rotary anode disk divided into distinct anode segments (10a, 10b) with adjacent anode segments which may e.g. be limited to each other by straight radial (14a) or S-shaped slits (14b)
ranging from the inner anode bulk (1) to the inner radial edge of the anode disk's outer frame section (3). Other exemplary embodiments of the present invention relate to a rotary anode disk structure design which comprises
liquid metal conductors (16a) between the inner anode bulk (1) and a rotary shaft (12) needed for rotating the rotary anode disk about its
rotational axis (5), said
liquid metal conductors (16a) providing a
liquid metal connection between the rotary anode and its rotary shaft (12), or to a rotary anode disk structure which comprises a sliding radial connection (17) and a flexible heat conductor (18) between the inner anode bulk (1) and the rotary shaft (12).