Energy weighting in grating-based X-ray phase-contrast imaging

With energy-resolving photon-counting detectors in grating-based x-ray phase-contrast imaging it is possible to reduce the dose needed and optimize the imaging chain towards better performance. The advantage of photon- counting detector’s linear energy response and absence of electronic noise in attenuation based imaging is known. The access to the energy information of the photons counted provides even further potential for optimization by applying energy weighting factors. We have evaluated energy weighting for grating-based phase-contrast imaging. Measurements with the hybrid photon-counting detector Dosepix were performed. The concept of energy binning implemented in the pixel electronics allows individual storing of the energy information of the incoming photons in 16 energy bins for each pixel. With this technique the full spectral information can be obtained pixel wise from one single acquisition. On the differential phase-contrast data taken, we applied different types of energy weighting factors. The results presented in this contribution demonstrate the advantages of energy-resolved photon-counting in differential phase-contrast imaging. Using a x-ray spectrum centred significantly above the interferometers design energy leads to poor image quality. But with the proposed method and detector the quality was enhanced by 2.8 times in signal-to-noise ratio squared. As this is proportional to dose, energy- resolved photon-counting might be valuable especially for medical applications.