Simulation of scatter in cone beam CT: effects on projection image quality

Cone-beam computed tomography (CT) projections were calculated by the Monte Carlo method for two cylindrical water phantoms of different sizes and for an antropomorphic voxel phantom with and without the presence of an anti-scatter grid. The scatter-to-primary ratio (SPR) was evaluated for each projection and the dependence of the amount of scattered radiation on the phantom size, cone beam size, photon energy, and antiscatter grid was investigated. It was found that the amount of scattered radiation is a slowly varying function of position in the image plane whose values, depending on configuration parameters, may cover a range of several magnitudes. The SPR reflects changes in the amount of primary photons and may reach values around 5 for large phantoms, wide beams and 120 kV spectrum or even higher values for low energy photons.