Spectral & Dual-Energy CT

Spectral CT measures X-ray attenuation at two or more energies so that materials with the same conventional CT number can be told apart. Dual-energy scanners use two tube voltages, dual-layer detectors or fast kVp switching; photon-counting detectors sort individual photons into several energy bins.

The extra information enables material decomposition (for example iodine, calcium and water maps), virtual non-contrast and virtual monoenergetic images, K-edge imaging of contrast agents such as gadolinium, and more accurate quantitative imaging. Uses include oncology, gout and kidney-stone characterisation, and material identification in industrial inspection.

Reconstruction approaches range from basis-material decomposition and polyenergetic statistical reconstruction to methods that exploit the correlation between energy channels, such as low-rank and tensor models and spectral patch priors, and more recently unrolled networks and neural representations for multi-material reconstruction. Each narrow energy bin is noisy, so reconstructing the bins jointly is the central theme.

Browse all 19 Spectral & Dual-Energy CT papers in the searchable directory

Start here

If you are new to this topic, these are good first reads, chosen by the maintainers.

• Energy-Selective Reconstructions in X-Ray Computerised Tomography (PMB, 1976)
  The paper that introduced energy-selective reconstruction and basis-material decomposition.
• Dual- and Multi-Energy CT: Principles, Technical Approaches, and Clinical Applications (Radiology, 2015)
  A clear review of the principles, scanner designs and clinical uses of dual- and multi-energy CT.
• K-Edge Imaging in X-Ray Computed Tomography Using Multi-Bin Photon Counting Detectors (PMB, 2007)
  Shows how multi-bin photon-counting detectors enable K-edge imaging of contrast agents.
• Non-Local Low-Rank Cube-Based Tensor Factorization for Spectral CT Reconstruction (TMI, 2018)
  A representative tensor-factorisation method that exploits correlation across energy channels.
• SOUL-Net: A Sparse and Low-Rank Unrolling Network for Spectral CT Image Reconstruction (TNNLS, 2024 · code)
  An unrolled sparse and low-rank network for spectral CT, with code.

Papers

All 19 papers, newest first.

Browse all 19 Spectral & Dual-Energy CT papers in the searchable directory

Datasets, benchmarks and toolkits

Entries from the directory whose tasks or tags match this topic.

• xraylib · Toolkit — X-ray matter interaction cross sections, fluorescence yields and Compton profiles; the physics layer for realistic simulation.
• XrayPhysics · Toolkit — X-ray cross sections, source-spectrum modelling, multi-material beam-hardening correction and dual-energy decomposition. From the LEAP author, and it pairs naturally with a simulator when you need a physically honest spectrum.

Other topics

• Surveys & Reviews (24)
• Classical & Iterative Reconstruction (71)
• Sparse-View CT (157)
• Limited-Angle Tomography (46)
• Low-Dose CT Denoising (69)
• Metal Artifact Reduction (23)
• Cone-Beam CT (77)
• Dynamic & 4D CT (24)
• Scatter Correction (11)
• Geometry Calibration & Motion Compensation (28)
• Deep Unrolling & Model-Based Learning (68)
• Self-Supervised & Untrained Methods (35)
• Diffusion & Generative Priors (68)
• Implicit Neural Representations (25)
• Gaussian Splatting (26)