Effect of light source instability on uniformity of 3D reconstructions from a cone beam optical CT scanner

Temporally varying light intensity during acquisition of projection images in an optical CT scanner can potentially be misinterpreted as physical properties of the sample. This work investigated the impact of LED light source intensity instability on measured attenuation coefficients. Different scenarios were investigated by conducting one or both of the reference and data scans in a ‘cold’ scanner, where the light source intensity had not yet stabilised. Uniform samples were scanned to assess the impact on measured uniformity. The orange (590 nm) light source decreased in intensity by 29 % over the first 2 h, while the red (633 nm) decreased by 9 %. The rates of change of intensity at 2 h were 0.1 and 0.03 % respectively over a 5 min period—corresponding to the scan duration. The normalisation function of the reconstruction software does not fully account for the intensity differences and discrepancies remain. Attenuation coefficient inaccuracies of up to 8 % were observed for data reconstructed from projection images acquired with a cold scanner. Increased noise was observed for most cases where one or both of the scans was acquired without sufficient warm-up. The decrease in accuracy and increase in noise were most apparent for data reconstructed from reference and data scans acquired with a cold scanner on different days.