Influence of imaging geometry on noise texture in X-ray in-line phase-contrast imaging

X-ray in-line phase-contrast imaging is a technique that aims to reconstruct the projected absorption and refraction properties of an object. To achieve this, phase retrieval algorithms are employed. The statistical properties of the reconstructed images in phase-contrast imaging remain largely unexplored. In this work, the covariance structure of the absorption and refractive index images is derived analytically, to characterize the noise texture in quantitative in-line phase-contrast imaging. This information is utilized to investigate how object detectability is affected by specification of imaging geometry.