Low dose and fast grating-based x-ray phase-contrast imaging using the integrating-bucket phase modulation technique

TL;DR

This paper introduces an integrating-bucket phase modulation technique for grating-based X-ray phase-contrast imaging, enabling faster measurements and lower radiation doses compared to traditional phase-stepping methods.

Contribution

The study demonstrates a novel integrating-bucket phase modulation approach for X-ray phase-contrast imaging, improving speed and reducing dose over existing phase-stepping strategies.

Findings

Effective extraction of differential phase-contrast images using the new method

Faster measurement capability demonstrated experimentally

Potential for lower radiation dose in clinical applications

Abstract

X-ray phase-contrast imaging has experienced rapid development over the last few decades, and in this technology, the phase modulation strategy of phase-stepping is used most widely to measure the sample's phase signal. However, because of its discontinuous nature, phase-stepping has the defects of worse mechanical stability and high exposure dose, which greatly hinder its wide application in dynamic phase measurement and potential clinical applications. In this manuscript, we demonstrate preliminary research on the use of integrating-bucket phase modulation method to retrieve the phase information in grating-based X-ray phase-contrast imaging. Experimental results showed that our proposed method can be well employed to extract the differential phase-contrast image, compared with the current mostly used phase-stepping strategy, advantage of integrating-bucket phase modulation technique is that fast measurement and low dose are promising.