Journal
JOURNAL OF PHYSICS D-APPLIED PHYSICS
Volume 47, Issue 36, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/0022-3727/47/36/365401
Keywords
phase-contrast imaging; phase retrieval; computed tomography; mammography
Categories
Funding
- International Synchrotron Access Program (ISAP) - Australian Government
- Australian Research Council (ARC)
- ARC Australian Research Fellowship [DP110101941, DP130104913]
- University of New England
Ask authors/readers for more resources
We report the results of a systematic study of phase-contrast x-ray computed tomography in the propagation-based and analyser-based modes using specially designed phantoms and excised breast tissue samples. The study is aimed at the quantitative evaluation and subsequent optimization, with respect to detection of small tumours in breast tissue, of the effects of phase contrast and phase retrieval on key imaging parameters, such as spatial resolution, contrast-to-noise ratio, x-ray dose and a recently proposed 'intrinsic quality' characteristic which combines the image noise with the spatial resolution. We demonstrate that some of the methods evaluated in this work lead to substantial (more than 20-fold) improvement in the contrast-to-noise and intrinsic quality of the reconstructed tomographic images compared with conventional techniques, with the measured characteristics being in good agreement with the corresponding theoretical estimations. This improvement also corresponds to an approximately 400-fold reduction in the x-ray dose, compared with conventional absorption-based tomography, without a loss in the imaging quality. The results of this study confirm and quantify the significant potential benefits achievable in three-dimensional mammography using x-ray phase-contrast imaging and phase-retrieval techniques.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available