Modeling and simulation results on a new Compton scattering tomography modality

Conventional tomography (X-ray scanner, Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography, Positron Emission Tomography, etc.) is widely used in numerous fields such as biomedical imaging, non-destructive industrial testing and environmental survey, etc. In these tomographies, a detector rotates in space to collect primary radiation emitted or transmitted by an object under investigation. In this case Compton scattered radiation behaves as noise hindering image quality and consequently correction to scatter should be required. However recently an interesting new imaging concept, which uses precisely scattered radiation as imaging agent, has been advocated. The camera records now images labeled by scattered photon energy or equivalently by scattering angle. In the present paper we propose a new modality of Compton scattering tomography (CST), akin to the X-ray scanning tomography, in the sense that it works in transmission modality but uses Compton scattered radiation to recover the electron density of the studied medium. The new image formation modeling is based on a new class of Radon transforms on circular arcs (CART). Through numerical simulation results we show the feasibility and the relevance of this new imaging process. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.