Performance evaluation of dual-energy CT and differential phase contrast CT in quantitative imaging applications

The purpose of this study is to evaluate and compare the quantitative material decomposition performance of the dual-energy CT (DECT) and differential phase contrast CT (DPCT) via numerical observer studies.The electron density (The model observer results show that the DECT is superior to DPCT at 0.3 mm spatial resolution (300 mm object size); the DECT and DPCT show similar quantitative imaging performance at 0.1 mm spatial resolution (100 mm object size); and the DPCT outperforms the DECT by approximately 1.5 times for the 0.3 mm sized imaging target at 0.03 mm spatial resolution (30 mm object size).In conclusion, the DECT would be recommended to obtain