Grating-based x-ray dark-field mammography: Assessing complementary imaging information in simple cystic lesions and typical fibroadenoma.

Background: A significant proportion of false positive recalls of mammography-screened women is due to benign breast cysts and simple fibroadenomas. These lesions appear mammographically as smooth-shaped dense masses and require the recalling of women for a breast ultrasound to obtain complementary imaging information. They can be identified safely by ultrasound with no need for further assessment or treatment.

Analyzer-free hard x-ray interferometry.

. To enable practical interferometry-based phase contrast CT using standard incoherent x-ray sources, we propose an imaging system where the analyzer grating is replaced by a high-resolution detector. Since there is no need to perform multiple exposures (with the analyzer grating at different positions) at each scan angle, this scheme is compatible with continuous-rotation CT apparatus, and has the potential to reduce patient radiation dose and patient motion artifacts.

Comparing x-ray phase-contrast imaging using a Talbot array illuminator to propagation-based imaging for non-homogeneous biomedical samples.

Phase-contrast computed tomography can visualize soft tissue samples with high contrast. At coherent sources, propagation-based imaging (PBI) techniques are among the most common, as they are easy to implement and produce high-resolution images. Their downside is a low degree of quantitative data due to simplifying assumptions of the sample properties in the reconstruction.

Spectral X-ray dark-field signal characterization from dual-energy projection phase-stepping data with a Talbot-Lau interferometer.

Material-selective analysis of spectral X-ray imaging data requires prior knowledge of the energy dependence of the observed signal. Contrary to conventional X-ray imaging, where the material-specific attenuation coefficient is usually precisely known, the linear diffusion coefficient of the X-ray dark-field contrast does not only depend on the material and its microstructure, but also on the setup geometry and is difficult to access. Here, we present an optimization approach to retrieve the energy dependence of the X-ray dark-field signal quantitatively on the example of closed-cell foams from projection data without the need for additional hardware to a standard grating-based X-ray dark-field imaging setup.