Abstract
Dual-energy computed tomography (DECT) allows one to obtain both density and atomic number and thus can provide information about material composition of scanned objects. In this paper, we extend a basis material decomposition method for high energy X-ray DECT used in cargo inspection. It differs from conventional DECT reconstruction methods by pair-production effect coming into play in the reconstruction. The pair-production does not happen for DECT in low energy level (lower than 1 MeV). The decomposition error of the basis material model and its applicability in the high-energy level are analyzed in this paper. A reconstruction method based on this model is proposed to reconstruct both the atomic number Z and the electron density ρe images for a high-energy DECT. The method is validated by a numerical simulation and a practical experiment on a cargo inspection system. Results show that the proposed reconstruction method is strongly grounded on physics and feasible for high-energy DECT in material discrimination, especially for cargo inspections. The advantages and limitations of the high-energy DECT, as well as possible improvements for future work are discussed in this paper.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | 5722070 |
Pages (from-to) | 537-546 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science |
Volume | 58 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 2011 |
Keywords
- Basis material model
- computed tomography (CT)
- dual-energy
- high energy
- reconstruction
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Nuclear and High Energy Physics
- Nuclear Energy and Engineering
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering