Signal-to-noise and spatial resolution in in-line imaging. 2. Phase-contrast tomography

Abstract

In the first part of this paper, quantitative aspects of propagation-based phase-contrast imaging (PBI) were investigated using theoretical and numerical approaches, as well as experimental two-dimensional PBI images collected with plane monochromatic X-rays at a synchrotron beamline. In this second part, signal-to-noise ratio, spatial resolution and contrast are studied in connection with the radiation dose in three-dimensional PBI images of breast tissue samples obtained using propagation-based phase-contrast computed tomography (PB-CT) with energy-integrating and photon-counting detectors. The analysis is based on the theory of PBI and PB-CT using the homogeneous Transport of Intensity eq..