Comparison of different Gaussian fitting and phase contrast retrieval methods

Edge illumination is an X-ray phase contrast imaging technique that allows for the recovery of differential phase and dark-field (also known as scattering) contrast, in addition to conventional attenuation based contrast. These signals are retrieved by analysing the illumination profile of a series of beamlets across a detector. This can provide a wealth of information about the sample, especially biological tissues which produce little contrast using conventional attenuation radiography. To perform signal retrieval, Gaussian curves can be fit to the illumination profiles using a variety of methods. In this work, we compare the most prominent of these methods in terms of their contrast to noise ratio as well as computational times to investigate their effect on the retrieved projection data as well as the final reconstructions.