Differential Phase-contrast Interior Tomography

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel interior tomography method using differential phase contrast, enabling accurate ROI reconstruction with reduced radiation by leveraging compressive sensing and total variation minimization.

Contribution

It proves exact interior reconstruction is possible with differential phase contrast data using total variation minimization, and develops an iterative algorithm for practical implementation.

Findings

Exact interior reconstruction achieved via total variation minimization.

Numerical simulations demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method.

Abstract

Differential phase contrast interior tomography allows for reconstruction of a refractive index distribution over a region of interest (ROI) for visualization and analysis of internal structures inside a large biological specimen. In this imaging mode, x-ray beams target the ROI with a narrow beam aperture, offering more imaging flexibility at less ionizing radiation. Inspired by recently developed compressive sensing theory, in numerical analysis framework, we prove that exact interior reconstruction can be achieved on an ROI via the total variation minimization from truncated differential projection data through the ROI, assuming a piecewise constant distribution of the refractive index in the ROI. Then, we develop an iterative algorithm for the interior reconstruction and perform numerical simulation experiments to demonstrate the feasibility of our proposed approach.