Scattering-compensated cone beam x-ray luminescence computed tomography

Abstract

X-ray luminescence computed tomography (XLCT) opens new possibilities to perform molecular imaging with x-ray. It is a dual modality imaging technique based on the principle that some nanophosphors can emit near-infrared (NIR) light when excited by x-rays. The x-ray scattering effect is a great issue in both CT and XLCT reconstruction. It has been shown that if the scattering effect compensated, the reconstruction average relative error can be reduced from 40% to 12% in the in the pencil beam XLCT. However, the scattering effect in the cone beam XLCT has not been proved. To verify and reduce the scattering effect, we proposed scattering-compensated cone beam x-ray luminescence computed tomography using an added leading to prevent the spare x-ray outside the irradiated phantom in order to decrease the scattering effect. Phantom experiments of two tubes filled with Y2O3:Eu3+ indicated that the proposed method could reduce the scattering by a degree of 30% and can reduce the location error from 1.8mm to 1.2mm. Hence, the proposed method was feasible to the general case and actual experiments and it is easy to implement.