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

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 de...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Sung, Yongjin, Segars, W. Paul, Pan, Adam, Ando, Masami, Sheppard, Colin J. R., Gupta, Rajiv
Other Authors: Harvard University--MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Nature Publishing Group 2015
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/98439
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5770-1241
Description
Summary: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.