US Patent 7693256 Phase-contrast X-ray imaging

A stereoscopic phase-contrast X-ray imaging system (1) comprises a stereoscopic radiation head (20) having at least one X-ray source (30, 31) providing a first (32) and second (33) X-ray beam in stereoscopic configuration onto an object (110). At least one detector (40, 41) detects the beams (32, 33) having passed through the object (110) and generates detection data. This data is processed by a phase-contrast stereoscopic reconstruction processor (60) to generate two 2D phase-contrast images (80, 82) of the object (110) collectively forming a stereoscopic image pair or stereo image providing high resolution 3D representation of the object (110).