Microtomography with sandwich detectors for small-animal bone imaging

Abstract

An x-ray radiographic system consisting of two detectors in tandem, or a sandwich detector, can produce dual-energy image from a single-shot exposure. Subtraction of two images obtained from the two detectors can produce a sharper image through an unsharp masking effect if the two images are formed at different spatial resolutions. This is indeed possible by incorporating different thicknesses of x-ray conversion layers in the detectors. In this study, we have developed a microtomography system with a sandwich detector in pursuit of high-resolution bone-enhanced small-animal imaging. The results show that the bone-enhanced images reconstructed from the dual-energy projection data provide higher visibility of bone details than the conventionally reconstructed images. The microtomography with the single-shot dual-energy sandwich detector will be useful for the high-resolution bone-enhanced small-animal imaging.