Quantitative quasi-local tomography using absorption and phase contrast

Possibilities are investigated for quantitative computed tomography (CT) reconstruction of the spatial distribution of refractive index in a region of interest (ROI) inside an object which is larger than the field of view. The analysis is presented for the case of conventional (absorption) CT, as well as diffraction (phase-contrast) CT. It is shown that in both cases an accurate reconstruction can be achieved using the projection data corresponding to rays passing through a sufficiently wide vicinity of a ROI. Our analysis also indicates that X-ray phase-contrast CT can typically be localized to smaller regions compared to absorption CT. In particular, quasi-local hard X-ray micro-CT of regions of the order of 100 μm or even smaller in size, appears feasible with the use of propagation-based phase contrast. Numerical and experimental tests confirm the possibility of accurate quantitative CT reconstruction from truncated projections.