Quantitative X-ray phase contrast computed tomography with grating interferometry

Abstract

The ability of biomedical imaging data to be of quantitative nature is getting increasingly important with the ongoing developments in data science. In contrast to conventional attenuation-based X-ray imaging, grating-based phase contrast computed tomography (GBPC-CT) is a phase contrast micro-CT imaging technique that can provide high soft tissue contrast at high spatial resolution. While there is a variety of different phase contrast imaging techniques, GBPC-CT can be applied with laboratory X-ray sources and enables quantitative determination of electron density and effective atomic number. In this review article, we present quantitative GBPC-CT with the focus on biomedical applications.

Quantitative differentiation of minimal-fat angiomyolipomas from renal cell carcinomas using grating-based x-ray phase-contrast computed tomography: An ex vivo study

“…Therefore, other imaging techniques should be considered. In the past, it was reported that combining the complementary information obtained from absorption-based and phase-contrast imaging can be used for a better discrimination of different soft tissue [26]. Our study indicates that mfAMLs have a higher quantitative phase-contrast signal within a more homogeneous tissue structure than the three investigated RCC subtypes or the oncocytoma samples.…”

“…GBPC-CT could provide a better understanding of the 3D morphology and quantitative composition of different tissue types at high spatial resolution. This is information that is currently hardly accessible in this combination with conventional histological analysis [26,48,49]. However, further increase of GBPC-CT performance is needed to push GBPC-CT towards virtual histology.…”

“…While there exist several techniques to access the x-ray phase-contrast signal [24], GBPC-CT is one phase-contrast imaging technique which has been successfully translated to incoherent polychromatic x-ray sources such as clinical high-flux x-ray sources [25]. Previous studies have shown an increased soft tissue contrast of grating-based phase-contrast compared to attenuation-based images [26], e.g. in breast cancer samples [27][28][29], characterization of atherosclerotic plaque [30,31], in different renal cysts [32] and RCCs [33].…”

Virtual grating approach for Monte Carlo simulations of edge illumination-based x-ray phase contrast imaging

“…This transition has been achieved in particular for grating-based interferometry (GBI) [2] and edge illumination (EI) [3,4]. A natural consequence of this evolution is that the research field is becoming increasingly oriented towards the development of real-world applications, such as non-destructive testing [5,6], security [7,8] and (bio)medical imaging [9,10,11]. Among these examples, medical XPCI is arguably the most acclaimed, even more so since the recent demonstration of medical x-ray dark field (DF) imaging of human lungs with a GBI-based system [12].…”

New technologies—the best is yet to come

“…Birnbacher et al's review [1] on the state-of-the-art quantitative X-ray gating-based phase-contrast computed tomography showcases the many promising applications of these techniques.…”