Engineering topics

Lei, Zhu

Publications and source records attributed to Lei, Zhu.

9 records

DOE OSTI2012

Relationship between x-ray illumination field size and flat field intensity and its impacts on x-ray imaging

Purpose: X-ray cone-beam CT (CBCT) is being increasingly used for various clinical applications, while its performance is still hindered by image artifacts. This work investigates a new source of reconstruction error, which is often overlooked in the current CBCT imaging. The authors find that the x-ray flat field intensity (I{sub 0}) varies significantly as the illumination volume size changes at different collimator settings. A wrong I{sub 0} value leads to inaccurate CT numbers of reconstructed images as well as wrong scatter measurements in the CBCT research. Methods: The authors argue that the finite size of x-ray focal spot together with the detector glare effect cause the I{sub 0} variation at different illumination sizes. Although the focal spot of commercial x-ray tubes typically has a nominal size of less than 1 mm, the off-focal-spot radiation covers an area of several millimeters on the tungsten target. Due to the large magnification factor from the field collimator to the detector, the penumbra effects of the collimator blades result in different I{sub 0} values for different illumination field sizes. Detector glare further increases the variation, since one pencil beam of incident x-ray is scattered into an area of several centimeters on the detector. In this paper, the authors study these two effects by measuring the focal spot distribution with a pinhole assembly and the detector point spread function (PSF) with an edge-spread function method. The authors then derive a formula to estimate the I{sub 0} value for different illumination field sizes, using the measured focal spot distribution and the detector PSF. Phantom studies are carried out to investigate the accuracy of scatter measurements and CT images with and without considering the I{sub 0} variation effects. Results: On our tabletop system with a Varian Paxscan 4030CB flat-panel detector and a Varian RAD-94 x-ray tube as used on a clinical CBCT system, the focal spot distribution has a measured full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM) of around 0.4 mm, while non-negligible off-focal-spot radiation is observed at a distance of over 2 mm from the center. The measured detector PSF has an FWHM of 0.510 mm, with a shape close to Gaussian. From these two distributions, the author calculate the estimated I{sub 0} values at different collimator settings. The I{sub 0} variation mainly comes from the focal spot effect. The estimation matches well with the measurements at different collimator widths in both horizontal and vertical directions, with an average error of less than 3%. Our method improves the accuracy of conventional scatter measurements, where the scatter is measured as the difference between fan-beam and cone-beam projections. On a uniform water cylinder phantom, more accurate I{sub 0} suppresses the unfaithful high-frequency signals at the object boundaries of the measured scatter, and the SPR estimation error is reduced from 0.158 to 0.014. The proposed I{sub 0} estimation also reduces the reconstruction error from about 20 HU on the Catphan Copyright-Sign 600 phantom in the selected regions of interest to less than 4 HU. Conclusions: The I{sub 0} variation is identified as one additional error source in x-ray imaging. By measuring the focal-spot distribution and detector PSF, the authors propose an accurate method of estimating the I{sub 0} value for different illumination field sizes. The method obtains more accurate scatter measurements and therefore facilitates scatter correction algorithm designs. As correction methods for other CBCT artifacts become more successful, our research is significant in further improving the CBCT imaging accuracy.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗

DOE OSTI2012

Quantitative cone-beam CT imaging in radiation therapy using planning CT as a prior: First patient studies

Purpose: Quantitative cone-beam CT (CBCT) imaging is on increasing demand for high-performance image guided radiation therapy (IGRT). However, the current CBCT has poor image qualities mainly due to scatter contamination. Its current clinical application is therefore limited to patient setup based on only bony structures. To improve CBCT imaging for quantitative use, we recently proposed a correction method using planning CT (pCT) as the prior knowledge. Promising phantom results have been obtained on a tabletop CBCT system, using a correction scheme with rigid registration and without iterations. More challenges arise in clinical implementations of our method, especially because patients have large organ deformation in different scans. In this paper, we propose an improved framework to extend our method from bench to bedside by including several new components. Methods: The basic principle of our correction algorithm is to estimate the primary signals of CBCT projections via forward projection on the pCT image, and then to obtain the low-frequency errors in CBCT raw projections by subtracting the estimated primary signals and low-pass filtering. We improve the algorithm by using deformable registration to minimize the geometry difference between the pCT and the CBCT images. Since the registration performance relies on the accuracy of the CBCT image, we design an optional iterative scheme to update the CBCT image used in the registration. Large correction errors result from the mismatched objects in the pCT and the CBCT scans. Another optional step of gas pocket and couch matching is added into the framework to reduce these effects. Results: The proposed method is evaluated on four prostate patients, of which two cases are presented in detail to investigate the method performance for a large variety of patient geometry in clinical practice. The first patient has small anatomical changes from the planning to the treatment room. Our algorithm works well even without the optional iterations and the gas pocket and couch matching. The image correction on the second patient is more challenging due to the effects of gas pockets and attenuating couch. The improved framework with all new components is used to fully evaluate the correction performance. The enhanced image quality has been evaluated using mean CT number and spatial nonuniformity (SNU) error as well as contrast improvement factor. If the pCT image is considered as the ground truth, on the four patients, the overall mean CT number error is reduced from over 300 HU to below 16 HU in the selected regions of interest (ROIs), and the SNU error is suppressed from over 18% to below 2%. The average soft-tissue contrast is improved by an average factor of 2.6. Conclusions: We further improve our pCT-based CBCT correction algorithm for clinical use. Superior correction performance has been demonstrated on four patient studies. By providing quantitative CBCT images, our approach significantly increases the accuracy of advanced CBCT-based clinical applications for IGRT.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗

DOE OSTI2012

OBSERVATIONS OF A HIGH-MASS PROTOSTAR IN NGC 7538 S

We present high angular resolution continuum observations of the high-mass protostar NGC 7538 S with BIMA and CARMA at 3 and 1.4 mm, Very Large Array (VLA) observations at 1.3, 2, 3.5, and 6 cm, and archive Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) observations from the Spitzer Space Observatory, which detect the star at 4.5, 5.8, and 8 {mu}m. The star looks rather unremarkable in the mid-IR. The excellent positional agreement of the IRAC source with the VLA free-free emission, the OH, CH{sub 3}OH, H{sub 2}O masers, and the dust continuum confirms that this is the most luminous object in the NGC 7538 S core. The continuum emission at millimeter wavelengths is dominated by dust emission from the dense cold cloud core surrounding the protostar. Including all array configurations, the emission is dominated by an elliptical source with a size of {approx}8'' Multiplication-Sign 3''. If we filter out the extended emission we find three compact millimeter sources inside the elliptical core. The strongest one, S{sub A}, coincides with the VLA/IRAC source and resolves into a double source at 1.4 mm, where we have subarcsecond resolution. The measured spectral index, {alpha}, between 3 and 1.4 mm is {approx}2.3, and steeper at longer wavelengths, suggesting a low dust emissivity or that the dust is optically thick. We argue that the dust in these accretion disks is optically thick and estimate a mass of an accretion disk or infalling envelope surrounding S{sub A} to be {approx}60 M{sub Sun }.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2011

Three-dimensional anisotropic adaptive filtering of projection data for noise reduction in cone beam CT

Purpose: The combination of quickly rotating C-arm gantry with digital flat panel has enabled the acquisition of three-dimensional data (3D) in the interventional suite. However, image quality is still somewhat limited since the hardware has not been optimized for CT imaging. Adaptive anisotropic filtering has the ability to improve image quality by reducing the noise level and therewith the radiation dose without introducing noticeable blurring. By applying the filtering prior to 3D reconstruction, noise-induced streak artifacts are reduced as compared to processing in the image domain. Methods: 3D anisotropic adaptive filtering was used to process an ensemble of 2D x-ray views acquired along a circular trajectory around an object. After arranging the input data into a 3D space (2D projections + angle), the orientation of structures was estimated using a set of differently oriented filters. The resulting tensor representation of local orientation was utilized to control the anisotropic filtering. Low-pass filtering is applied only along structures to maintain high spatial frequency components perpendicular to these. The evaluation of the proposed algorithm includes numerical simulations, phantom experiments, and in-vivo data which were acquired using an AXIOM Artis dTA C-arm system (Siemens AG, Healthcare Sector, Forchheim, Germany). Spatial resolution and noise levels were compared with and without adaptive filtering. A human observer study was carried out to evaluate low-contrast detectability. Results: The adaptive anisotropic filtering algorithm was found to significantly improve low-contrast detectability by reducing the noise level by half (reduction of the standard deviation in certain areas from 74 to 30 HU). Virtually no degradation of high contrast spatial resolution was observed in the modulation transfer function (MTF) analysis. Although the algorithm is computationally intensive, hardware acceleration using Nvidia's CUDA Interface provided an 8.9-fold speed-up of the processing (from 1336 to 150 s). Conclusions: Adaptive anisotropic filtering has the potential to substantially improve image quality and/or reduce the radiation dose required for obtaining 3D image data using cone beam CT.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗

DOE OSTI2011

OUTFLOW, INFALL, AND PROTOSTARS IN THE STAR-FORMING CORE W3-SE

We report new results on outflow and infall in the star-forming cores W3-SE SMA-1 and SMA-2 based on analysis of {approx}2.''5 resolution observations of the molecular lines HCN(3-2), HCO{sup +}(3-2), N{sub 2}H{sup +}(3-2), and CH{sub 3}OH(5{sub 2,3}-4{sub 1,3}) with the Submillimeter Array (SMA). A high-velocity bipolar outflow originating from the protostellar core SMA-1 was observed in the HCN(3-2) line, with a projected outflow axis at a position angle of 48{sup 0}. The detection of the outflow is confirmed from other molecular lines. An inverse P-Cygni profile in the HCN(3-2) line toward SMA-1 suggests that at least one of the double cores accretes matter from the molecular core. A filamentary structure in the molecular gas surrounds SMA-1 and SMA-2. Based on the SMA observations, our analysis suggests that the double pre-stellar cores SMA-1 and SMA-2 result from fragmentation in the collapsing massive molecular core W3-SE, and it is likely that they are forming intermediate- to high-mass stars which will be new members of a star cluster in the W3-SE region.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2011

Inverse planning for IMRT with nonuniform beam profiles using total-variation regularization (TVR)

Purpose: Radiation therapy with high dose rate and flattening filter-free (FFF) beams has the potential advantage of greatly reduced treatment time and out-of-field dose. Current inverse planning algorithms are, however, not customized for beams with nonuniform incident profiles and the resultant IMRT plans are often inefficient in delivery. The authors propose a total-variation regularization (TVR)-based formalism by taking the inherent shapes of incident beam profiles into account. Methods: A novel TVR-based inverse planning formalism is established for IMRT with nonuniform beam profiles. The authors introduce a TVR term into the objective function, which encourages piecewise constant fluence in the nonuniform FFF fluence domain. The proposed algorithm is applied to lung and prostate and head and neck cases and its performance is evaluated by comparing the resulting plans to those obtained using a conventional beamlet-based optimization (BBO). Results: For the prostate case, the authors' algorithm produces acceptable dose distributions with only 21 segments, while the conventional BBO requires 114 segments. For the lung case and the head and neck case, the proposed method generates similar coverage of target volume and sparing of the organs-at-risk as compared to BBO, but with a markedly reduced segment number. Conclusions: TVR-based optimization in nonflat beam domain provides an effective way to maximally leverage the technical capacity of radiation therapy with FFF fields. The technique can generate effective IMRT plans with improved dose delivery efficiency without significant deterioration of the dose distribution.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2010

In situ measurement of the bonded film thickness of Z-Tetraol lubricant on magnetic recording media

Currently, the bonded film thickness of perfluoropolyether lubricant on top of magnetic recording media is measured by a two-step process. First, the media disk has to be rinsed thoroughly using a fluorocarbon solvent (for instance, Vetrel) to remove the mobile lubricant. Second, the thickness of the remaining lubricant on the media surface which is regarded as the bonded lubricant thickness is then measured either by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) or electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis. As the total lubricant thickness approaches single molecular dimension ({approx}10 A), current methods face tremendous challenge on the accuracy and sensitivity of the measurement. We studied the spectral characteristics responding to the lubricant bonding with the carbon overcoat by the time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectra and proposed to use the peak area ratio (C{sub 3}H{sub 2}F/C{sub 3}H{sub 5}O and C{sub 4}H{sub 10}O/C{sub 3}H{sub 6}O{sub 2}) to characterize the bonded Z-Tetraol lubricant that produces a direct bonded lubricant thickness measurement without the need to remove the mobile lubricant with a solvent. After taking the background signal of disks prior to bonding by UV irradiation into account, this method becomes independent of the total lubricant thickness as well as shows good correlation linearity (R{sup 2{approx}}87%) with the current FTIR method for the ratio of C{sub 4}H{sub 10}O/C{sub 3}H{sub 6}O{sub 2}.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

DOE OSTI2010

Shading correction for on-board cone-beam CT in radiation therapy using planning MDCT images

Purpose: Applications of cone-beam CT (CBCT) to image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT) are hampered by shading artifacts in the reconstructed images. These artifacts are mainly due to scatter contamination in the projections but also can result from uncorrected beam hardening effects as well as nonlinearities in responses of the amorphous silicon flat panel detectors. While currently, CBCT is mainly used to provide patient geometry information for treatment setup, more demanding applications requiring high-quality CBCT images are under investigation. To tackle these challenges, many CBCT correction algorithms have been proposed; yet, a standard approach still remains unclear. In this work, we propose a shading correction method for CBCT that addresses artifacts from low-frequency projection errors. The method is consistent with the current workflow of radiation therapy. Methods: With much smaller inherent scatter signals and more accurate detectors, diagnostic multidetector CT (MDCT) provides high quality CT images that are routinely used for radiation treatment planning. Using the MDCT image as ''free'' prior information, we first estimate the primary projections in the CBCT scan via forward projection of the spatially registered MDCT data. Since most of the CBCT shading artifacts stem from low-frequency errors in the projections such as scatter, these errors can be accurately estimated by low-pass filtering the difference between the estimated and raw CBCT projections. The error estimates are then subtracted from the raw CBCT projections. Our method is distinct from other published correction methods that use the MDCT image as a prior because it is projection-based and uses limited patient anatomical information from the MDCT image. The merit of CBCT-based treatment monitoring is therefore retained. Results: The proposed method is evaluated using two phantom studies on tabletop systems. On the Catphan(c)600 phantom, our approach reduces the reconstruction error from 348 Hounsfield unit (HU) without correction to 4 HU around the object center after correction, and from 375 HU to 17 HU in the high-contrast regions. In the selected regions of interest (ROIs), the average image contrast is increased by a factor of 3.3. When noise suppression is implemented, the proposed correction substantially improves the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) and therefore the visibility of low-contrast objects, as seen in a more challenging pelvis phantom study. Besides a significant improvement in image uniformity, a low-contrast object of {approx}25 HU, which is otherwise buried in the shading artifacts, can be clearly identified after the proposed correction due to a CNR increase of 3.1. Compared to a kernel-based scatter correction method coupled with an analytical beam hardening correction, our approach also shows an overall improved performance with some residual artifacts. Conclusions: By providing effective shading correction, our approach has the potential to improve the accuracy of more advanced CBCT-based clinical applications for IGRT, such as tumor delineation and dose calculation.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2010

Modulator design for x-ray scatter correction using primary modulation: Material selection

Purpose: An optimal material selection for primary modulator is proposed in order to minimize beam hardening of the modulator in x-ray cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT). Recently, a measurement-based scatter correction method using primary modulation has been developed and experimentally verified. In the practical implementation, beam hardening of the modulator blocker is a limiting factor because it causes inconsistency in the primary signal and therefore degrades the accuracy of scatter correction. Methods: This inconsistency can be purposely assigned to the effective transmission factor of the modulator whose variation as a function of object filtration represents the magnitude of beam hardening of the modulator. In this work, the authors show that the variation reaches a minimum when the K-edge of the modulator material is near the mean energy of the system spectrum. Accordingly, an optimal material selection can be carried out in three steps. First, estimate and evaluate the polychromatic spectrum for a given x-ray system including both source and detector; second, calculate the mean energy of the spectrum and decide the candidate materials whose K-edge energies are near the mean energy; third, select the optimal material from the candidates after considering both the magnitude of beam hardening and the physical and chemical properties. Results: A tabletop x-ray CBCT system operated at 120 kVp is used to validate the material selection method in both simulations and experiments, from which the optimal material for this x-ray system is then chosen. With the transmission factor initially being 0.905 and 0.818, simulations show that erbium provides the least amount of variation as a function of object filtrations (maximum variations are 2.2% and 4.3%, respectively, only one-third of that for copper). With different combinations of aluminum and copper filtrations (simulating a range of object thicknesses), measured overall variations are 2.5%, 1.0%, and 8.6% for 25.4 {mu}m of copper, erbium, and tungsten, respectively. With and without 300 {mu}m of copper in the beam, the measured variations for 25.4 {mu}m of copper, erbium, and tungsten, 1 mm of aluminum, as well as 406 {mu}m of copper, are 1.8%, 0.2%, 5.5%, 1.9%, and 7.5%, respectively. Conclusions: The spatial variation in the effective transmission factor of the modulator blocker due to beam hardening caused by the modulator itself reaches a minimum when the K-edge of the modulator material is near the mean energy of the spectrum. An optimal modulator material selection using the K-edge discontinuity is therefore proposed.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗