Keywords:
X-ray micro-CT, small-angle scattering, grating based x-ray imaging, pathological studies
The state of the art micro-CT scanner plays an indispensable role in examining small animals and various samples. For example, surgical specimens can be scanned to find positive tumor margins. However, most of available micro-CT systems are of general types, and suffer from a poor soft tissue contrast. In this paper, we propose a new detector design dedicated to capture small-angle scattering signals only, which carry critical pathological information for differentiation between benign and malignant tumors. Our design consists of two interlaced gratings so that both the primary flux and Compton scattering photons are effectively blocked to leave the apertures mainly open to small-angle scattering photons. By theoretical analysis and Monte Carlo simulation, it is demonstrated that with our proposed techniques small-angle scattering signals can be detected for image reconstruction.
- Guang Li
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA
- Wenxiang Cong
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA
- James S. Michaelson
- Harvard Medical School, USA
- Ge Wang
- Biomedical Imaging Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA
- Hong Liu
- University of Oklahoma, USA
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