title: Small-angle scatter tomography with a photon-counting detector array.
abstract: Small-angle x-ray scatter imaging has a high intrinsic contrast in cancer research and other applications, and provides information on molecular composition and micro-structure of the tissue. In general, the implementations of small-angle coherent scatter imaging can be divided into two main categories: direct tomography and angular dispersive computerized tomography. Based on the recent development of energy-discriminative photon-counting detector array, here we propose a computerized tomography setup based on energy-dispersive measurement with a photon-counting detector array. To show merits of the energy-dispersive approach, we have performed numerical tests with a phantom containing various tissue types, in comparison with the existing imaging approaches. The results show that with an energy resolution of ~6 keV, the energy dispersive tomography system with a broadband tabletop x-ray would outperform the angular dispersive system, which makes the x-ray small-angle scatter tomography promising for high-specificity tissue imaging.
authors.affiliation: The College of Optics and Photonics, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, USA.
authors.forename: Shuo
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pang
authors.forename: Zheyuan
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Ge
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Wenxiang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Cong
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D017785:Photons; D011874:Radiometry / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods; D053838:Scattering, Small Angle; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D014965:X-Rays