Publications by authors named "Klaus-Jurgen Engel"

Purpose: Cone-beam CT in the interventional suite could be an alternative to CT to shorten door-to-thrombectomy time. However, image quality in cone-beam CT is limited by artifacts and poor differentiation between gray and white matter. This study compared non-contrast brain dual-layer cone-beam CT in the interventional suite to reference standard CT in stroke patients.

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Grating-based X-ray phase-contrast and in particular dark-field radiography are promising new imaging modalities for medical applications. Currently, the potential advantage of dark-field imaging in early-stage diagnosis of pulmonary diseases in humans is being investigated. These studies make use of a comparatively large scanning interferometer at short acquisition times, which comes at the expense of a significantly reduced mechanical stability as compared to tabletop laboratory setups.

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Background: Currently, alternative medical imaging methods for the assessment of pulmonary involvement in patients infected with COVID-19 are sought that combine a higher sensitivity than conventional (attenuation-based) chest radiography with a lower radiation dose than CT imaging.

Methods: Sixty patients with COVID-19-associated lung changes in a CT scan and 40 subjects without pathologic lung changes visible in the CT scan were included (in total, 100, 59 male, mean age 58 ± 14 years). All patients gave written informed consent.

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Purpose: To investigate the properties of tomographic grating-based phase contrast imaging with respect to its noise power spectrum and the energy dependence of the achievable contrast to noise ratio.

Methods: Tomographic simulations of an object with 11 cm diameter constituted of materials of biological interest were conducted at different energies ranging from 25 to 85 keV by using a wave propagation approach. Using a Monte Carlo simulation of the x-ray attenuation within the object, it is verified that the simulated measurement deposits the same dose within the object at each energy.

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The feasibility of K-edge imaging using energy-resolved, photon-counting transmission measurements in X-ray computed tomography (CT) has been demonstrated by simulations and experiments. The method is based on probing the discontinuities of the attenuation coefficient of heavy elements above and below the K-edge energy by using energy-sensitive, photon counting X-ray detectors. In this paper, we investigate the dependence of the sensitivity of K-edge imaging on the atomic number Z of the contrast material, on the object diameter D , on the spectral response of the X-ray detector and on the X-ray tube voltage.

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The most obvious problem in obtaining spectral information with energy-resolving photon counting detectors in clinical computed tomography (CT) is the huge x-ray flux present in conventional CT systems. At high tube voltages (e.g.

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The need for fine detail visibility in various applications such as dental imaging, mammography, but also neurology and cardiology, is the driver for intensive efforts in the development of new x-ray detectors. The spatial resolution of current scintillator layers is limited by optical diffusion. This limitation can be overcome by a pixelation, which prevents optical photons from crossing the interface between two neighboring pixels.

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