X-ray computed tomography (CT) is a crucial tool for non-invasive medical diagnosis that uses differences in materials’ attenuation coefficients to generate contrast and provide 3D information. Grating-based phase- and dark-field-contrast X-ray imaging is an innovative technique that utilizes refraction and small-angle scattering to generate additional co-registered images with improved contrast and microstructural information. While it is already possible to perform human chest dark-field radiography, it is assumed that its diagnostic value increases when performed in a tomographic setup. However, the susceptibility of Talbot-Lau interferometers to mechanical vibrations coupled with a need to minimize data acquisition times has hindered its application in clinical routines and the combination of the two techniques in the past.

In this work, we propose a processing pipeline to address this issue in a human-sized clinical dark-field CT system. We present the corrective measures that have to be applied in the employed processing and reconstruction algorithms to mitigate the effects of vibrations and deformations of the interferometer gratings. This is achieved by identifying and mitigating spatially and temporally variable vibrations in the interferometer. By exploiting correlations in the modular grating setup, we can identify relevant fluctuation modes and separate the fluctuation and sample information, enabling vibration-artifact free sample reconstruction.