Dark-field computed tomography

Last revised by Joachim Feger on 11 May 2024

Dark-field computed tomography is an emerging medical imaging technology. While conventional CT measures differential attenuation properties of the various tissues, dark-field CT utilizes its small-angle scattering (dark field) characteristics.

To date, dark-field radiography has not yet been widely used in clinical practice.

In preclinical animal models its potential has been shown in diagnosing and staging a variety of lung diseases (COPD, fibrosis, inflammation, tumors etc.), but due to various technical challenges upscaling the technology has proved to be difficult. However, it has been shown that dark-field imaging is also feasible by relatively minor modifications in existing state-of-the-art clinical CT systems 1

Instead of attenuation of x-ray photons, dark-field CT measures the complementary small-angle scattering and refraction of x-ray interacting with tissues 1. The main benefit of the technology is that differences in the angular deviation (phase contrast) of the incident x-ray beam interacting with various biological tissues are typically greater than their attenuation difference, thus resulting in higher intrinsic contrast 2

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