Small-angle scatter tomography with a photon-counting detector array. (19th April 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Pang, Shuo; Zhu, Zheyuan; Wang, Ge; Cong, Wenxiang
• Is Part Of: Physics in medicine & biology. Volume 61:Number 10(2016:May)
• Page Start: 3734
• Page End: 3748
• Publication Date: 2016-04-19
• Subjects: photon counting detectors -- coherent scattering -- x-ray CT -- dark-field; Biophysics -- Periodicals; Medical physics -- Periodicals; 610.153
• DOI: 10.1088/0031-9155/61/10/3734
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0031-9155

Abstract

Abstract: Small-angle x-ray scatter imaging has a high intrinsic contrast in cancer research and other applications, and provides information on molecular composition and micro-structure of the tissue. In general, the implementations of small-angle coherent scatter imaging can be divided into two main categories: direct tomography and angular dispersive computerized tomography. Based on the recent development of energy-discriminative photon-counting detector array, here we propose a computerized tomography setup based on energy-dispersive measurement with a photon-counting detector array. To show merits of the energy-dispersive approach, we have performed numerical tests with a phantom containing various tissue types, in comparison with the existing imaging approaches. The results show that with an energy resolution of ~6 keV, the energy dispersive tomography system with a broadband tabletop x-ray would outperform the angular dispersive system, which makes the x-ray small-angle scatter tomography promising for high-specificity tissue imaging.