ABSTRACT
The technological advancements made in photon-counting spectral CT and the preliminary success made by energy-integration CT in the clinic are encouraging optimistic anticipation that, with the potential technological solutions to improve its imaging performance and its synergy with novel contrast agents, spectral CT, especially one that operates with photon counting, will be eventually able to advance CT's clinical utility in a manner that can be more significant than incremental, if not make breakthroughs. The decomposition of interaction proposed by Alvarez and Macovski has been the physical foundation of spectral CT, regardless of its implementation in energy integration or photon counting. With spectral CT, the contrast agents corresponding to different materials can be administered at different time points and one single CT scan is made at an adequate time.
