%0 journal article
%@ 1932-6203
%A Herzen, J., Willner, M.S., Fingerle, A.A., Noel, P.B., Koehler, T., Drecoll, E., Rummeny, E.J., Pfeiffer, F.

%D 2014
%J PLoS One
%N 1
%P e83369 
%R doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0083369
%T Imaging Liver Lesions Using Grating-Based Phase-Contrast Computed Tomography with Bi-Lateral Filter Post-Processing
%U https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0083369
1 
%X X-ray phase-contrast imaging shows improved soft-tissue contrast compared to standard absorption-based X-ray imaging. Especially the grating-based method seems to be one promising candidate for clinical implementation due to its extendibility to standard laboratory X-ray sources. Therefore the purpose of our study was to evaluate the potential of grating-based phase-contrast computed tomography in combination with a novel bi-lateral denoising method for imaging of focal liver lesions in an ex vivo feasibility study. Our study shows that grating-based phase-contrast CT (PCCT) significantly increases the soft-tissue contrast in the ex vivo liver specimens. Combining the information of both signals – absorption and phase-contrast – the bi-lateral filtering leads to an improvement of lesion detectability and higher contrast-to-noise ratios. The normal and the pathological tissue can be clearly delineated and even internal structures of the pathological tissue can be visualized, being invisible in the absorption-based CT alone. Histopathology confirmed the presence of the corresponding findings in the analyzed tissue. The results give strong evidence for a sufficiently high contrast for different liver lesions using non-contrast-enhanced PCCT. Thus, ex vivo imaging of liver lesions is possible with a polychromatic X-ray source and at a spatial resolution of ~100 µm. The post-processing with the novel bi-lateral denoising method improves the image quality by combining the information from the absorption and the phase-contrast images.