Fast scattering simulation tool for multi-energy x-ray imaging

A combination of Monte Carlo (MC) and deterministic approaches was employed as a means of creating a simulation tool capable of providing energy resolved x-ray primary and scatter images within a reasonable time interval. Libraries of Sindbad, a previously developed x-ray simulation software, were used in the development. A cross-validation of the method against an analog MC (EGS4) simulation and a GATE simulation was performed. Results in terms of absorbed energy images obtained by the simulation tool proved to be in agreement with those generated by EGS4 and GATE with a global error of 9.28% and 5.76%, respectively. The difference in spectra, when compared to EGS4, was 4.21%-7.89%. Having the capability of being significantly faster than an analog MC approach, the hybrid method was able to generate a complete spectral scatter image within 1.5 hours using a single core 2.83 GHz CPU. Finally, a demonstration of the spectral capabilities of the developed tool is given by analyzing x-ray scatter in the energy domain.