The cross-section of an X-ray phase shift image is a thousand times greater than that of X-ray attenuation in soft tissue over the diagnostic energy range implying phase imaging can achieve a much higher signal-to-noise ratio and substantially lower radiation dose than attenuation-based X-ray imaging. Grating interferometry is a state of the art X-ray imaging approach, which can simultaneously acquire information of X-ray phase-contrast, dark-field, and linear attenuation. This imaging modality can reveal subtle texture of tissues.

Time of flight PET (TOF-PET) is an advance over traditional PET that uses the time difference in detection of the two photon events. TOF information provides better localization of the annihilation event along the line formed by each detector pair, resulting in an overall improvement in signal to noise ratio (SNR) of the reconstructed image. This technology uses a direct estimation of the sinogram only from TOF PET data.

Computed Tomography (CT) is an important tool in diagnostic imaging. It plays a key role in diagnosis and intervention. Many advanced CT systems use wide detector arrays, multiple sources, andor very fast rotation speed, for important clinical applications (e.g., coronary artery and whole organ perfusion imaging). As a result, modern CT scanners are expensive and are typically used by major hospitals and clinics in developed countries. Over the past decades, CT systems or methods have been proposed assuming linear translation-based scanning.

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) utilizes electrodes placed on the surface of a body to determine the complex conductivity distribution within the body. When using a voltage source in EIT, it is necessary to know both the applied voltage and the resulting current with high precision, which cannot be achieved with current systems.