Deterministic simulation of first-order scattering in virtual X-ray imaging

A deterministic algorithm is proposed to compute the contribution of first-order Compton- and Rayleigh-scattered radiation in X-ray imaging. This algorithm has been implemented in a simulation code named virtual X-ray imaging. The physical models chosen to account for photon scattering are the well-known form factor and incoherent scattering function approximations, which are recalled in this paper and whose limits of validity are briefly discussed. The proposed algorithm, based on a voxel discretization of the inspected object, is presented in detail, as well as its results in simple configurations, which are shown to converge when the sampling steps are chosen sufficiently small. Simple criteria for choosing correct sampling steps (voxel and pixel size) are established. The order of magnitude of the computation time necessary to simulate first-order scattering images amounts to hours with a PC architecture and can even be decreased down to minutes, if only a profile is computed (along a linear detector). Finally, the results obtained with the proposed algorithm are compared to the ones given by the Monte Carlo code Geant4 and found to be in excellent accordance, which constitutes a validation of our algorithm. The advantages and drawbacks of the proposed deterministic method versus the Monte Carlo method are briefly discussed. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.