Monte Carlo Simulation for Polychromatic X-Ray Fluorescence Computed Tomography with Sheet-Beam Geometry

Abstract EN

X-ray fluorescence computed tomography (XFCT) based on sheet beam can save a huge amount of time to obtain a whole set of projections using synchrotron.

However, it is clearly unpractical for most biomedical research laboratories.

In this paper, polychromatic X-ray fluorescence computed tomography with sheet-beam geometry is tested by Monte Carlo simulation.

First, two phantoms (A and B) filled with PMMA are used to simulate imaging process through GEANT 4.

Phantom A contains several GNP-loaded regions with the same size (10 mm) in height and diameter but different Au weight concentration ranging from 0.3% to 1.8%.

Phantom B contains twelve GNP-loaded regions with the same Au weight concentration (1.6%) but different diameter ranging from 1 mm to 9 mm.

Second, discretized presentation of imaging model is established to reconstruct more accurate XFCT images.

Third, XFCT images of phantoms A and B are reconstructed by filter back-projection (FBP) and maximum likelihood expectation maximization (MLEM) with and without correction, respectively.

Contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) is calculated to evaluate all the reconstructed images.

Our results show that it is feasible for sheet-beam XFCT system based on polychromatic X-ray source and the discretized imaging model can be used to reconstruct more accurate images.