System and method for regularized reconstruction of phase contrast computerized tomography

A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored thereon instructions which when executed by a processor cause the processor to perform a method for reconstructing under-sampled phase contrast computed tomography data, the method comprising:

• obtaining under-sampled scan data of a subject-under-test, the object scan performed on a phase contrast computed tomography (PCT) system;
• performing a regularized Fourier analysis on the under-sampled scan data;
• computing Fourier coefficients for the under-sampled scan data;
• correcting for one or more PCT system contributions to the under-sampled scan data by dividing the computed Fourier coefficients by Fourier coefficients representative of the one or more PCT system contributions;
• obtaining at least one of an absorption sinogram, a differential phase sinogram, and a dark field sinogram from the corrected Fourier coefficients;
• and
• performing tomographic reconstruction on the obtained absorption sinogram, the obtained differential phase sinogram, and the obtained dark field sinogram.

A phase contrast computed tomography (PCT) system comprising:

• an x-ray emitting tube positioned to emit x-rays towards a scan subject;
• a phase/absorption grating window on a side of the scan subject distal from the x-ray emitting tube;
• an absorption window distal from the phase/absorption window;
• an x-ray detector distal from the absorption window;
• a control processor configured to execute computer instructions to cause the processor to perform a method for reconstructing under-sampled phase contrast computed tomography data, the method including:
• obtaining under-sampled scan data of a subject-under-test, the object scan performed on a phase contrast computed tomography (PCT) system;
• performing a regularized Fourier analysis on the under-sampled scan data;
• computing Fourier coefficients for the under-sampled scan data;
• correcting for one or more PCT system contributions to the under-sampled scan data by dividing the computed Fourier coefficients by Fourier coefficients representative of the one or more PCT system contributions;
• obtaining at least one of an absorption sinogram, a differential phase sinogram, and a dark field sinogram from the corrected Fourier coefficients;
• and
• performing tomographic reconstruction on the obtained absorption sinogram, the obtained differential phase sinogram, and the obtained dark field sinogram.