Compton scattering

Compton scattering is the predominant interaction between X rays and soft tissue in medical imaging. Compton scattering is an inelastic scattering of the X ray photon by an outer shell electron. Part of the energy of the photon is transferred to the scattering electron, thereby ionizing the atom and increasing the wavelength of the X ray. The scattered photon can go in any direction, but a direction similar to the original direction is a bit more likely, especially for high energy X rays. The probability for different scattering angles are described by the Klein