Fluence adaptation for contrast‐based dose optimization in x‐ray phase‐contrast imaging

Purpose: X‐ray phase‐contrast imaging (XPCI) can provide multiple contrasts with great potentials for clinical and industrial applications, including conventional attenuation, phase contrast, and dark field. Grating‐based imaging (GBI) and edge‐illumination (EI) are two promising types of XPCI as the conventional x‐ray sources can be directly utilized. For the GBI and EI systems, the phase‐stepping acquisition with multiple exposures at a constant fluence is usually adopted in the literature.This work, however, attempts to challenge such a constant fluence concept during the phase‐stepping process and proposes a fluence adaptation mechanism for dose reduction.