A joint reconstruction and lambda tomography regularization technique for energy-resolved x-ray imaging

Abstract

We present new joint reconstruction and regularization techniques inspired by ideas in microlocal analysis and lambda tomography, for the simultaneous reconstruction of the attenuation coefficient and electron density from x-ray transmission (i.e., x-ray CT) and backscattered data (assumed to be primarily Compton scattered). To demonstrate our theory and reconstruction methods, we consider the ‘parallel line segment’ acquisition geometry of Webber J and Miller E (2020 Inverse Problems 36 025007), which is motivated by system architectures currently under development for airport security screening. We first present a novel microlocal analysis of the parallel line geometry which explains the nature of image artefacts when the attenuation coefficient and electron density are reconstructed separately. We next introduce a new joint reconstruction scheme for low effective Z (atomic number) imaging (Z < 20) characterized by a regularization strategy whose structure is derived from lambda tomography principles and motivated directly by the microlocal analytic results. Finally we show the effectiveness of our method in combating noise and image artefacts on simulated phantoms.