Differential phase contrast tomosynthesis imaging

The development of differential phase contrast imaging using conventional x-ray tubes has spurred great interest in the medical imaging community. It has been shown to provide higher contrast than absorption imaging in some cases, and in this work we translate these advantages to tomosynthesis imaging. A general framework for reconstruction of images from differential phase contrast projection data has been proposed and implemented using data from a grating-based x-ray phase contrast tomosynthesis system. Reconstructed tomosynthesis images from differential phase contrast data are shown, using both a direct backprojection (BP) technique and a filtered backprojection (FBP) reconstruction method. From the results it is seen that phase contrast tomosynthesis can separate superimposed phase objects while providing complementary information to absorption tomosynthesis.