Multiple information tomosynthesis with grating-based phase-contrast imaging

Hard X-ray phase-contrast imaging has been a hot research field in the last decade. It can provide high sensitivity of weakly absorbing low-Z objects in medical and biological fields. Grating-based differential phase-contrast (DPC) method has been paid more attention to because it can work with conventional X-ray tube and shows great potential for clinic application. Tomosynthesis with the combination of phase-contrast imaging is considered as a promising imaging method which can significantly enhance the contrast of low absorbing tissues and eliminate the effects of superimposed tissue on anatomical structures and is especially useful for medical applications such as mammography. In this paper, an experimental phase-contrast tomosynthesis system is implemented based on a weakly coherent hard X-ray phase-contrast method proposed by our group recently. The effectiveness of the proposed method is proved by actual experiments. Multiple information (absorption, refraction and dark-field) of the samples can be retrieved in one single imaging process by information retrieving methods. Then tomosynthesis reconstructions can be performed based on the retrieved information. It can eliminate the overlap of the sample structures and provide more extensive image information compared with conventional tomosynthesis.