Journal
MEDICAL PHYSICS
Volume 38, Issue 3, Pages 1189-1195Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1118/1.3553408
Keywords
x ray grating interferometer; x-ray beam hardening; phase contrast
Funding
- BMBF [01EZ0925]
- DFG excellence cluster Munich-Centre for Advanced Photonics (DFG) [EXC-158]
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Purpose: In this work, the authors investigate how beam hardening affects the image formation in x-ray phase-contrast imaging and consecutively develop a correction algorithm based on the results of the analysis. Methods: The authors' approach utilizes a recently developed x-ray imaging technique using a grating interferometer capable of visualizing the differential phase shift of a wave front traversing an object. An analytical description of beam hardening is given, highlighting differences between attenuation and phase-contrast imaging. The authors present exemplary beam hardening artifacts for a number of well-defined samples in measurements at a compact laboratory setup using a polychromatic source. Results: Despite the differences in image formation, the authors show that beam hardening leads to a similar reduction of image quality in phase-contrast imaging as in conventional attenuation-contrast imaging. Additionally, the authors demonstrate that for homogeneous objects, beam hardening artifacts can be corrected by a linearization technique, applicable to all kinds of phase-contrast methods using polychromatic sources. Conclusions: The evaluated correction algorithm is shown to yield good results for a number of simple test objects and can thus be advocated in medical imaging and nondestructive testing. (C) 2011 American Association of Physicists in Medicine. [DOI: 10.1118/1.3553408]
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