Design and construction of a micro-focus in-line phase-contrast cone-beam CT (PC-CBCT) system for soft tissue imaging

Weixing Cai; Ruola Ning

doi:10.1117/12.844379

23 March 2010 Design and construction of a micro-focus in-line phase-contrast cone-beam CT (PC-CBCT) system for soft tissue imaging

Weixing Cai, Ruola Ning

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 7622, Medical Imaging 2010: Physics of Medical Imaging; 76225F (2010) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.844379
Event: SPIE Medical Imaging, 2010, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

In recent years, the in-line phase-contrast (in-line PC) technique has been implemented using synchrotrons and microfocus x-ray tubes for soft tissue imaging as the in-line PC's image quality enhancement. In this study, a new in-line phase-contrast cone-beam CT (PC-CBCT) system has been designed and tested in our lab to produce higher image quality enhancement. The PC-CBCT system consists of a micro-focus x-ray tube, a high-resolution detector and a rotating phantom holder. The nominal focal spot size is 9 microns, which is expected to produce partially coherent x-rays. The detector system has a phosphor screen, an optical fiber coupling unit and a CMOS chip with an effective pixel pitch of 22.5 microns. Some key system parameters, including tube voltage (or x-ray spectrum), source-to-object distance and object-to-detector distance were balanced and optimized to achieve enough spatial coherence and degree of interference to acquire edge-enhanced phase-contrast images as projection images. The phantom holder was rotated for 360 degrees with a step of 1.2 degrees, and during the rotation in-line PC images were acquired at all angular positions. The FDK algorithm was applied to compute the reconstruction using the edge-enhanced PC images. Small soft tissue samples (breast tissues and animal organs) were scanned and reconstructed. The tomographic images showed enhanced structure edges and details.

Citation Download Citation

Weixing Cai and Ruola Ning "Design and construction of a micro-focus in-line phase-contrast cone-beam CT (PC-CBCT) system for soft tissue imaging", Proc. SPIE 7622, Medical Imaging 2010: Physics of Medical Imaging, 76225F (23 March 2010); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.844379

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