· · · Repository hosted by TU Delft Library

Differential phase-contrast imaging in the x-ray domain provides three physically complementary pieces of information: the attenuation,the differential phase-contrast, related to the refractive index, and the dark-field signal, related to the total amount of radiation scattered into very small angles. In medical applications, it is of the utmost importance to present to the radiologist all clinically relevant information in as compact a way as possible. Hence, the needarisis for a method to combine two or more of the above mentioned images into one image containing all information relevant for diagnosis. We present an image composition algorithm that fuses the attenuation image and the differential phase contrast image into a composite image. The composition is performed in a noise optimal way such that the composite image is characterized by minimal noise-power at each frequency component.

A quantitative theory for the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) in differential phase contrast imaging (DPCI) is proposed and compared to that of images derived from classical absorption contrast imaging (ACI). Most prominently, the CNR for DPCI contains the reciprocal of thespatial wavelength to be imaged, the fringe visibility, and a tunable factor dependent on the system geometry. DPCI is thus potentiallybeneficial especially for the imaging of small object structures. We demonstrate CNR calculations for mammography, finding optimal imaging energies between 15 and 22 keV for ACI, and between 20 and 40 keV for DPCI.