title: Energy-discriminative performance of a spectral micro-CT system.
abstract: Experiments were performed to evaluate the energy-discriminative performance of a spectral (multi-energy) micro-CT system. The system, designed by MARS (Medipix All Resolution System) Bio-Imaging Ltd. (Christchurch, New Zealand), employs a photon-counting energy-discriminative detector technology developed by CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). We used the K-edge attenuation characteristics of some known materials to calibrate the detector's photon energy discrimination. For tomographic analysis, we used the compressed sensing (CS) based ordered-subset simultaneous algebraic reconstruction techniques (OS-SART) to reconstruct sample images, which is effective to reduce noise and suppress artifacts. Unlike conventional CT, the principal component analysis (PCA) method can be applied to extract and quantify additional attenuation information from a spectral CT dataset. Our results show that the spectral CT has a good energy-discriminative performance and provides more attenuation information than the conventional CT.
authors.affiliation: The Key Lab of Optoelectronic Technology and Systems of the Education Ministry of China, Chongqing University, Chongqing, China.
authors.forename: Peng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: He
authors.forename: Hengyong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bennett
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ronaldson
authors.forename: Rafidah
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zainon
authors.forename: Anthony
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Butler
authors.forename: Phil
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Butler
authors.forename: Biao
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.forename: Ge
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D008954:Models, Biological; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D055114:X-Ray Microtomography / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*