Virtual speckle-based X-ray phase-contrast and dark-field imaging with digital phantoms

We demonstrate two versatile, flexible, and accurate frameworks based on numerical and Monte Carlo approaches to simulate the X-ray speckle-based (SBI) technique for lab-based systems. The established tools can reproduce experimental setups in a cone-beam geometry and with polychromatic sources. Furthermore, they are computationally efficient to enable a fast virtual multi-modal tomography of digitized inhomogeneous phantoms. The proposed methods were evaluated and validated by analytical and experimental data for various samples. The Monte Carlo approach provides a realistic and accurate simulation, which is useful in diffuser design and dosimetry studies, while the numerical method is very efficient for parametric and tomographic studies. These approaches will be used for the optimization of lab-based X-ray SBI setups and generating sample images for enhancing phase retrieval algorithms. Published by Optica Publishing Group under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.