Cone-beam CT (CBCT) scanners are based on volumetric tomography, using a 2D extended digital array providing an area detector [1,2]. Compared to traditional CT, CBCT has many advantages, such as less X-ray beam limita...Cone-beam CT (CBCT) scanners are based on volumetric tomography, using a 2D extended digital array providing an area detector [1,2]. Compared to traditional CT, CBCT has many advantages, such as less X-ray beam limitation, and rapid scan time, etc. However, in CBCT images the x-ray beam has lower mean kilovolt (peak) energy, so the metal artifact is more pronounced on. The position of the shadowed region in other views can be tracked by projecting the 3D coordinates of the object. Automatic image segmentation was used to replace the pixels inside the metal object with the boundary pixels. The modified projection data, using synthetically Radon Transformation, were then used to reconstruct a new back projected CBCT image. In this paper, we present a method, based on the morphological, area and pixel operators, which we applied on the Radon transformed image, to reduce the metal artifacts in CBCT, then we built the Radon back project images using the radon invers transformation. The artifacts effects on the 3d-reconstruction is that, the soft tissues appears as bones or teeth. For the preprocessing of the CBCT images, two methods are used to recognize the noisy black areas that the first depends on thresholding and closing algorithm, and the second depends on tracing boundaries after using thresholding algorithm too. The intensity of these areas is the lowest in the image than other tissues, so we profit this property to detect the edges of these areas. These two methods are applied on phantom and patient image data. It deals with reconstructed CBCT dicom images and can effectively reduce such metal artifacts. Due to the data of the constructed images are corrupted by these metal artifacts, qualitative and quantitative analysis of CBCT images is very essential.展开更多
This review paper aims to summarize cardiac CT blooming artifacts,how they present clinically and what their root causes and potential solutions are.A literature survey was performed covering any publications with a s...This review paper aims to summarize cardiac CT blooming artifacts,how they present clinically and what their root causes and potential solutions are.A literature survey was performed covering any publications with a specific interest in calcium blooming and stent blooming in cardiac CT.The claims from literature are compared and interpreted,aiming at narrowing down the root causes and most promising solutions for blooming artifacts.More than 30 journal publications were identified with specific relevance to blooming artifacts.The main reported causes of blooming artifacts are the partial volume effect,motion artifacts and beam hardening.The proposed solutions are classified as high-resolution CT hardware,high-resolution CT reconstruction,subtraction techniques and post-processing techniques,with a special emphasis on deep learning(DL)techniques.The partial volume effect is the leading cause of blooming artifacts.The partial volume effect can be minimized by increasing the CT spatial resolution through higherresolution CT hardware or advanced high-resolution CT reconstruction.In addition,DL techniques have shown great promise to correct for blooming artifacts.A combination of these techniques could avoid repeat scans for subtraction techniques.展开更多
CBCT scanners have been widely used in angiography,radiotherapy guidance,mammography and oral maxillofacial imaging.To cut detector size,reduce manufacturing costs and radiation dose while keeping a reasonable FOV,the...CBCT scanners have been widely used in angiography,radiotherapy guidance,mammography and oral maxillofacial imaging.To cut detector size,reduce manufacturing costs and radiation dose while keeping a reasonable FOV,the flat panel detector can be placed off-center horizontally.This scanning configuration extends the FOV effectively.However,each projection is transversely truncated,bringing errors and artifacts in reconstruction.In this paper,a simple but practical method is proposed for this scanning geometry based on truncation compensation and the modified FDK algorithm.Numerical simulations with jaw phantom were conducted to evaluate the accuracy and practicability of the proposed method.A novel CBCT system for maxillofacial imaging is used for clinical test,which is equipped with an off-center small size flat panel detector.Results show that reconstruction accuracy is acceptable for clinical use,and the image quality appears sufficient for specific diagnostic requirements.It provides a novel solution for clinical CBCT system,in order to reduce radiation dose and manufacturing cost.展开更多
In helical cone-beam computed tomography(CT), Feldkamp-Davis-Kress(FDK) based image reconstruction algorithms are by far the most popular. However, artifacts are commonly met in the presence of lateral projection trun...In helical cone-beam computed tomography(CT), Feldkamp-Davis-Kress(FDK) based image reconstruction algorithms are by far the most popular. However, artifacts are commonly met in the presence of lateral projection truncation. The reason is that the ramp filter is global. To restrain the truncation artifacts, an approximate reconstruction formula is proposed based on the Derivative-Hilbert-Backprojection(DHB) framework. In the method, the first order derivative filter is followed by the Hilbert transform. Since the filtered projection values are almost zero by the first order derivative filter, the following Hilbert transform has little influence on the projection values, even though the projections are laterally truncated. The proposed method has two main advantages. First, it has comparable computational efficiency and image quality as well as the conventional helical FDK algorithm for non-truncated projections. The second advantage is that images can be reconstructed with acceptable quality and much lower computational cost in comparison to the Laplace operator based algorithm in cases with truncated projections. To point out the advantages of our method, simulations on the computer and real data experiments on our laboratory industrial cone-beam CT are conducted. The simulated and experimental results demonstrate that the method is feasible for image reconstruction in the case of projection truncation.展开更多
To solve the problem that metal artifacts severely damage the clarity of the organization structure in computed tomography（CT） images, a sinogram fusion-based metal artifact correction method is proposed. First, the...To solve the problem that metal artifacts severely damage the clarity of the organization structure in computed tomography（CT） images, a sinogram fusion-based metal artifact correction method is proposed. First, the metal image is segmented from the original CT image by the pre-set threshold. The original CT image and metal image are forward projected into the original projection sinogram and metal projection sinogram, respectively. The interpolation-based correction method and mean filter are used to correct the original CT image and preserve the edge of the corrected CT image, respectively. The filtered CT image is forward projected into the filtered image sinogram. According to the position of the metal sinogram in the original sinogram and filtered image sinogram, the corresponding sinograms PM^D （ in the original sinogram） and PM^C （ in the filtered image sinogram）can be acquired from the original sinogram and filtered image sinogram, respectively. Then, PM^D and PM^C are fused into the fused metal sinogram PM^F according to a certain proportion.The final sinogram can be acquired by fusing PM^F , PM^D and the original sinogram P^O. Finally, the final sinogram is reconstructed into the corrected CT image and metal information is compensated into the corrected CT image.Experiments on clinical images demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively reduce metal artifacts. A comparison with classical metal artifacts correction methods shows that the proposed metal artifacts correction method performs better in metal artifacts suppression and tissue feature preservation.展开更多
Objective: Computed tomography (CT)-based attenuation correction (CTAC) offers the clear benefit of reliable reconstruction of single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) images through its ability to achieve o...Objective: Computed tomography (CT)-based attenuation correction (CTAC) offers the clear benefit of reliable reconstruction of single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) images through its ability to achieve object-specific attenuation maps, but artifacts from dense materials often deteriorate CTAC performance. Therefore, we investigate the feasibility of CTAC in the presence of dense materials using dual-energy virtual monochromatic CT data. Methods: A sodium pertechnetate-filled cylindrical uniform phantom, with a pair of undiluted iodine syringes attached, is scanned with a dual-source CT scanner to obtain both single-energy (120 kVp) polychromatic and dual-energy (80 kVp/140 kVp with tin filtering) virtual monochromatic CT images. The single-energy and the dual-energy CT images are then converted to attenuation maps at 141 keV. SPECT images are reconstructed from 99mTc emission data of the phantom using each single-energy and dual-energy attenuation map and incorporating CTAC procedure. A region-of-in- terest analysis is performed to quantitatively compare the attenuation maps between the single-energy and the dual-energy techniques, each at an iodine-free position and a position adjacent to the iodine solutions. Results: At the iodine-free position, the phantom provides a uniform distribution of attenuation maps in both the single-energy and the dual-energy techniques. In the presence of adjacent iodine solutions, however, severe artifacts appeare in the single-energy CT images. These artifacts make attenuation values fluctuate, resulting in erroneous pixel values in the CTAC SPECT images. In contrast, dual-energy CT strongly suppresses the artifacts and hence improves the uniformity of the attenuation maps and the resultant SPECT images. Conclusions: Dual-energy CT with virtual monochromatic reconstruction has the potential to substantially reduce artifacts arising from dense materials. It has the potential to improve the accuracy of attenuation maps and the resultant CTAC SPECT images.展开更多
文摘Cone-beam CT (CBCT) scanners are based on volumetric tomography, using a 2D extended digital array providing an area detector [1,2]. Compared to traditional CT, CBCT has many advantages, such as less X-ray beam limitation, and rapid scan time, etc. However, in CBCT images the x-ray beam has lower mean kilovolt (peak) energy, so the metal artifact is more pronounced on. The position of the shadowed region in other views can be tracked by projecting the 3D coordinates of the object. Automatic image segmentation was used to replace the pixels inside the metal object with the boundary pixels. The modified projection data, using synthetically Radon Transformation, were then used to reconstruct a new back projected CBCT image. In this paper, we present a method, based on the morphological, area and pixel operators, which we applied on the Radon transformed image, to reduce the metal artifacts in CBCT, then we built the Radon back project images using the radon invers transformation. The artifacts effects on the 3d-reconstruction is that, the soft tissues appears as bones or teeth. For the preprocessing of the CBCT images, two methods are used to recognize the noisy black areas that the first depends on thresholding and closing algorithm, and the second depends on tracing boundaries after using thresholding algorithm too. The intensity of these areas is the lowest in the image than other tissues, so we profit this property to detect the edges of these areas. These two methods are applied on phantom and patient image data. It deals with reconstructed CBCT dicom images and can effectively reduce such metal artifacts. Due to the data of the constructed images are corrupted by these metal artifacts, qualitative and quantitative analysis of CBCT images is very essential.
基金Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Heart,Lung,And Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health,No.R01HL151561The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.
文摘This review paper aims to summarize cardiac CT blooming artifacts,how they present clinically and what their root causes and potential solutions are.A literature survey was performed covering any publications with a specific interest in calcium blooming and stent blooming in cardiac CT.The claims from literature are compared and interpreted,aiming at narrowing down the root causes and most promising solutions for blooming artifacts.More than 30 journal publications were identified with specific relevance to blooming artifacts.The main reported causes of blooming artifacts are the partial volume effect,motion artifacts and beam hardening.The proposed solutions are classified as high-resolution CT hardware,high-resolution CT reconstruction,subtraction techniques and post-processing techniques,with a special emphasis on deep learning(DL)techniques.The partial volume effect is the leading cause of blooming artifacts.The partial volume effect can be minimized by increasing the CT spatial resolution through higherresolution CT hardware or advanced high-resolution CT reconstruction.In addition,DL techniques have shown great promise to correct for blooming artifacts.A combination of these techniques could avoid repeat scans for subtraction techniques.
基金Supported by National Key Technology R&D Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology(No.2012BAI07B05)
文摘CBCT scanners have been widely used in angiography,radiotherapy guidance,mammography and oral maxillofacial imaging.To cut detector size,reduce manufacturing costs and radiation dose while keeping a reasonable FOV,the flat panel detector can be placed off-center horizontally.This scanning configuration extends the FOV effectively.However,each projection is transversely truncated,bringing errors and artifacts in reconstruction.In this paper,a simple but practical method is proposed for this scanning geometry based on truncation compensation and the modified FDK algorithm.Numerical simulations with jaw phantom were conducted to evaluate the accuracy and practicability of the proposed method.A novel CBCT system for maxillofacial imaging is used for clinical test,which is equipped with an off-center small size flat panel detector.Results show that reconstruction accuracy is acceptable for clinical use,and the image quality appears sufficient for specific diagnostic requirements.It provides a novel solution for clinical CBCT system,in order to reduce radiation dose and manufacturing cost.
基金Supported by the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China(No.2012AA011603)National Nature Science Foundation of China(No.61372172)
文摘In helical cone-beam computed tomography(CT), Feldkamp-Davis-Kress(FDK) based image reconstruction algorithms are by far the most popular. However, artifacts are commonly met in the presence of lateral projection truncation. The reason is that the ramp filter is global. To restrain the truncation artifacts, an approximate reconstruction formula is proposed based on the Derivative-Hilbert-Backprojection(DHB) framework. In the method, the first order derivative filter is followed by the Hilbert transform. Since the filtered projection values are almost zero by the first order derivative filter, the following Hilbert transform has little influence on the projection values, even though the projections are laterally truncated. The proposed method has two main advantages. First, it has comparable computational efficiency and image quality as well as the conventional helical FDK algorithm for non-truncated projections. The second advantage is that images can be reconstructed with acceptable quality and much lower computational cost in comparison to the Laplace operator based algorithm in cases with truncated projections. To point out the advantages of our method, simulations on the computer and real data experiments on our laboratory industrial cone-beam CT are conducted. The simulated and experimental results demonstrate that the method is feasible for image reconstruction in the case of projection truncation.
基金Open Research Fund of the Key Laboratory of Computer Netw ork and Information Integration of Ministry of Education of Southeast University(No.K93-9-2014-10C)the Scientific Research Foundation of Education Department of Anhui Province(No.KJ2014A186,SK2015A433)the National Basic Research Program of China(973 Program)(No.2010CB732503)
文摘To solve the problem that metal artifacts severely damage the clarity of the organization structure in computed tomography（CT） images, a sinogram fusion-based metal artifact correction method is proposed. First, the metal image is segmented from the original CT image by the pre-set threshold. The original CT image and metal image are forward projected into the original projection sinogram and metal projection sinogram, respectively. The interpolation-based correction method and mean filter are used to correct the original CT image and preserve the edge of the corrected CT image, respectively. The filtered CT image is forward projected into the filtered image sinogram. According to the position of the metal sinogram in the original sinogram and filtered image sinogram, the corresponding sinograms PM^D （ in the original sinogram） and PM^C （ in the filtered image sinogram）can be acquired from the original sinogram and filtered image sinogram, respectively. Then, PM^D and PM^C are fused into the fused metal sinogram PM^F according to a certain proportion.The final sinogram can be acquired by fusing PM^F , PM^D and the original sinogram P^O. Finally, the final sinogram is reconstructed into the corrected CT image and metal information is compensated into the corrected CT image.Experiments on clinical images demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively reduce metal artifacts. A comparison with classical metal artifacts correction methods shows that the proposed metal artifacts correction method performs better in metal artifacts suppression and tissue feature preservation.
文摘Objective: Computed tomography (CT)-based attenuation correction (CTAC) offers the clear benefit of reliable reconstruction of single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) images through its ability to achieve object-specific attenuation maps, but artifacts from dense materials often deteriorate CTAC performance. Therefore, we investigate the feasibility of CTAC in the presence of dense materials using dual-energy virtual monochromatic CT data. Methods: A sodium pertechnetate-filled cylindrical uniform phantom, with a pair of undiluted iodine syringes attached, is scanned with a dual-source CT scanner to obtain both single-energy (120 kVp) polychromatic and dual-energy (80 kVp/140 kVp with tin filtering) virtual monochromatic CT images. The single-energy and the dual-energy CT images are then converted to attenuation maps at 141 keV. SPECT images are reconstructed from 99mTc emission data of the phantom using each single-energy and dual-energy attenuation map and incorporating CTAC procedure. A region-of-in- terest analysis is performed to quantitatively compare the attenuation maps between the single-energy and the dual-energy techniques, each at an iodine-free position and a position adjacent to the iodine solutions. Results: At the iodine-free position, the phantom provides a uniform distribution of attenuation maps in both the single-energy and the dual-energy techniques. In the presence of adjacent iodine solutions, however, severe artifacts appeare in the single-energy CT images. These artifacts make attenuation values fluctuate, resulting in erroneous pixel values in the CTAC SPECT images. In contrast, dual-energy CT strongly suppresses the artifacts and hence improves the uniformity of the attenuation maps and the resultant SPECT images. Conclusions: Dual-energy CT with virtual monochromatic reconstruction has the potential to substantially reduce artifacts arising from dense materials. It has the potential to improve the accuracy of attenuation maps and the resultant CTAC SPECT images.
