Realistic wave-optics simulation of X-ray phase-contrast imaging at a human scale

• Main Authors: Sung, Yongjin (Author), Segars, W. Paul (Author), Pan, Adam (Contributor), Ando, Masami (Author), Sheppard, Colin J. R. (Author), Gupta, Rajiv (Author)
• Other Authors: Harvard University- (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Nature Publishing Group, 2015-09-10T16:19:21Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

X-ray phase-contrast imaging (XPCI) can dramatically improve soft tissue contrast in X-ray medical imaging. Despite worldwide efforts to develop novel XPCI systems, a numerical framework to rigorously predict the performance of a clinical XPCI system at a human scale is not yet available. We have developed such a tool by combining a numerical anthropomorphic phantom defined with non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS) and a wave optics-based simulator that can accurately capture the phase-contrast signal from a human-scaled numerical phantom. Using a synchrotron-based, high-performance XPCI system, we provide qualitative comparison between simulated and experimental images. Our tool can be used to simulate the performance of XPCI on various disease entities and compare proposed XPCI systems in an unbiased manner.
United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. AXiS Program (Grant N66001-11-4204, P.R. 1300217190)
Japan. Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research 18206011)