Quantitative Analysis of Contrast to Noise Ratio Using a Phase Contrast X-ray Imaging Prototype

The purpose of this study was to determine the Contrast to Noise Ratio (CNR) of the x-ray images taken with the phase contrast imaging mode and compare them with the CNR of the images taken under the conventional mode. For each mode, three images were taken under three exposure conditions of 100 kVp (2.8mAs), 120 kVp (1.9mAs) and 140kVp (1.42mAs). A 1.61cm thick contrast detail phantom was used as an imaging object. For phase contrast, the source to image detector distance (SID) was 182.88 cm and the source to object (SOD) distance was 73.15 cm. The SOD was the same as SID in the conventional imaging mode. A computed radiography (CR) plate was used as a detector and the output CR images were converted to linear form in relation with the incident x-ray exposure. To calculate CNR, an image processing software was used to determine the mean pixel value and the standard deviation of the pixels in the region of interest (ROI) and in the nearby background around ROI. At any given exposure condition investigated in this study, the CNR values for the phase contrast images were better as compared to the corresponding conventional mode images. The superior image quality in terms of CNR is contributed by the phase-shifts resulted contrast, as well as the reduced scatters due to the air gap between the object and the detector.