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Exploiting voxel-sparsity for bone imaging with sparse-view cone-beam computed tomography

An optimization-based image reconstruction frame work is developed specifically for bone imaging. This framework exploits voxel-sparsity by use of ℓ 1 -norm image regularization and it enables image reconstruction from sparse-view cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) acquisition. The effectiveness of the voxel-sparsity regularization is enhanced by using a blurred image representation. Ramp-filtering is included in the data discrepancy term and it has the effect of acting as a preconditioner, reducing the necessary number of iterations. The bone image reconstruction framework is demonstrated on CBCT data taken from an equine metacarpal condyle specimen.

Bone imaging↗

Scalable FBP decomposition for cone-beam CT reconstruction

Filtered Back-Projection (FBP) is a fundamental compute intense algorithm used in tomographic image reconstruction. Cone-Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) devices use a cone-shaped X-ray beam, in comparison to the parallel beam used in older CT generations. Distributed image reconstruction of cone-beam datasets typically relies on dividing batches of images into different nodes. This simple input decomposition, however, introduces limits on input/output sizes and scalability.We propose a novel decomposition scheme and reconstruction algorithm for distributed FPB. This scheme enables arbitrarily large input/output sizes, eliminates the redundancy arising in the end-to-end pipeline and improves the scalability by replacing two communication collectives with only one segmented reduction. Finally, we implement the proposed decomposition scheme in a framework that is useful for all current-generation CT devices (7th gen). In our experiments using up to 1024 GPUs, our framework can construct 40963 volumes, for real-world datasets, in under 16 seconds (including I/O).

Chen, Peng↗

Quantitative Bioluminescence Tomography-Guided Conformal Irradiation for Preclinical Radiation Research

Widely used cone beam computed tomography (CBCT)-guided irradiators in preclinical radiation research are limited to localize soft tissue target because of low imaging contrast. Knowledge of target volume is a fundamental need for radiation therapy (RT). Without such information to guide radiation, normal tissue can be overirradiated, introducing experimental uncertainties. This led us to develop high-contrast quantitative bioluminescence tomography (QBLT) for guidance. The use of a 3-dimensional bioluminescence signal, related to cell viability, for preclinical radiation research is one step toward biology-guided RT.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗

A Review of Doses for Dental Imaging in 2010–2020 and Development of a Web Dose Calculator

Dental imaging is one of the most common types of diagnostic radiological procedures in modern medicine. We introduce a comprehensive table of organ doses received by patients in dental imaging procedures extracted from literature and a new web application to visualize the summarized dose information. We analyzed articles, published after 2010, from PubMed on organ and effective doses delivered by dental imaging procedures, including intraoral radiography, panoramic radiography, and cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT), and summarized doses by dosimetry method, machine model, patient age, and technical parameters. Mean effective doses delivered by intraoral, 1.32 (0.60–2.56) μSv, and panoramic, 17.93 (3.47–75.00) μSv, procedures were found to be about1% and 15% of that delivered by CBCT, 121.09 (17.10–392.20) μSv, respectively. In CBCT imaging, child phantoms received about 29% more effective dose than the adult phantoms received. The effective dose of a large field of view (FOV) (>150 cm2) was about 1.6 times greater than that of a small FOV (<50 cm2). The maximum CBCT effective dose with a large FOV for children, 392.2 μSv, was about 13% of theeffective dose that a person receives on average every year from natural radiation, 3110 μSv. Monte Carlo simulations of representative cases of the three dental imaging procedures were then conducted to estimate and visualize the dose distribution within the head. The user-friendly interactive web application (available at http://dentaldose.org) receives user input, such as the number of intraoral radiographs taken, and displays total organ and effective doses, dose distribution maps, and a comparison with other medical and natural sources of radiation. The web dose calculator provides a practical resource for patients interested in understanding the radiation doses delivered by dental imaging procedures.

Lee, Hawon↗

Advancing the Frontiers of Deep Learning for Low-Dose 3D Cone-Beam CT Reconstruction

X-ray computed tomography (CT) is an important noninvasive medical imaging modality for studying the structural details of internal organs. Image reconstruction in CT is an inverse problem of recovering an object's internal structure from the absorption profile of X-ray beams (sinogram) measured using a detector. The classical variational approach for CT reconstruction minimizes an energy functional using an appropriate iterative algorithm. Motivated by the success of deep learning (DL), researchers have begun to leverage training data and enhanced computing capabilities in recent years to produce high-fidelity reconstructed images. Nonetheless, much of the academic research in DL algorithms for CT has focused primarily on the two-dimensional setting (with simplified forward operators and noise model) for proofs-of-concept, and a comprehensive benchmarking of various classical and data-driven CT reconstruction approaches has not beenundertaken. The key objective of our CT reconstruction grand challenge was to promote methodological advancements for both classical and DL-based approaches for clinical CT with a reasonably accurately simulated 3D CT forward operator and noise model. We have utilized the publicly available LIDC-IDRI dataset and simulated sinograms and FDK images corresponding to two dose levels (clinical- and low-dose, constituting two tracks of the challenge) starting from the normal-dose images as the ground truth. In this paper, we summarize the motivation, context, and results of our challenge, and highlight the future research directions in DL for clinical CT.

X-ray tomography↗

An empirical method for geometric calibration of a photon counting detector-based cone beam CT system

BACKGROUND: Geometric calibration is essential in developing a reliable computed tomography (CT) system. It involves estimating the geometry under which the angular projections are acquired. Geometric calibration of cone beam CTs employing small area detectors, such as currently available photon counting detectors (PCDs), is challenging when using traditional-based methods due to detectors’ limited areas. OBJECTIVE: This study presented an empirical method for the geometric calibration of small area PCD-based cone beam CT systems. METHODS: Unlike the traditional methods, we developed an iterative optimization procedure to determine geometric parameters using the reconstructed images of small metal ball bearings (BBs) embedded in a custom-built phantom. An objective function incorporating the sphericities and symmetries of the embedded BBs was defined to assess performance of the reconstruction algorithm with the given initial estimated set of geometric parameters. The optimal parameter values were those which minimized the objective function. The TIGRE toolbox was employed for fast tomographic reconstruction. To evaluate the proposed method, computer simulations were carried out using various numbers of spheres placed in various locations. Furthermore, efficacy of the method was experimentally assessed using a custom-made benchtop PCD-based cone beam CT. RESULTS: Computer simulations validated the accuracy and reproducibility of the proposed method. The precise estimation of the geometric parameters of the benchtop revealed high-quality imaging in CT reconstruction of a breast phantom. Within the phantom, the cylindrical holes, fibers, and speck groups were imaged in high fidelity. The CNR analysis further revealed the quantitative improvements of the reconstruction performed with the estimated parameters using the proposed method. CONCLUSION: Apart from the computational cost, we concluded that the method was easy to implement and robust.

Instruments & Instrumentation↗

Fourier method for 3-dimensional data fusion of X-ray Computed Tomography and ultrasound

X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) is essential for nondestructive inspection of many manufactured components but is susceptible to various forms of artifacts and noise. In particular, multi-detector row cone-beam CT systems can suffer from so called “cone-beam” artifacts and partial volume effects, particularly on planar edges at the periphery of the field of view in the cone angle dimension. Uni-directional ultrasonic testing methods generally have extremely accurate in-plane depth resolution but poorer lateral resolution due to physical and geometric constraints. This paper presents a novel technique called Computed Tomographic Fusion (CT-F) which uses three-dimensional Fourier filtering to combine x-ray cone-beam CT reconstructions and ultrasound data in the frequency space. The result is a single image with improved accuracy and quality. CT-F mitigates artifacts while allowing for rapid, accurate characterization of large three-dimensional CT volumes. Finally, using simulations and experiments, we demonstrate artifact reduction and edge contrast improvement in volumetric reconstructions.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Physics‐based iterative reconstruction for dual‐source and flying focal spot computed tomography

Purpose For single‐source helical Computed Tomography (CT), both Filtered‐Back Projection (FBP) and statistical iterative reconstruction have been investigated. However, for dual‐source CT with flying focal spot (DS‐FFS CT), a statistical iterative reconstruction that accurately models the scanner geometry and acquisition physics remains unknown to researchers. Therefore, our purpose is to present a novel physics‐based iterative reconstruction method for DS‐FFS CT and assess its image quality. Methods Our algorithm uses precise physics models to reconstruct from the native cone‐beam geometry and interleaved dual‐source helical trajectory of a DS‐FFS CT. To do so, we construct a noise physics model to represent data acquisition noise and a prior image model to represent image noise and texture. In addition, we design forward system models to compute the locations of deflected focal spots, the dimension, and sensitivity of voxels and detector units, as well as the length of intersection between x‐rays and voxels. The forward system models further represent the coordinated movement between the dual sources by computing their x‐ray coverage gaps and overlaps at an arbitrary helical pitch. With the above models, we reconstruct images by an advanced Consensus Equilibrium (CE) numerical method to compute the maximum a posteriori estimate to a joint optimization problem that simultaneously fits all models. Results We compared our reconstruction with Siemens ADMIRE, which is the clinical standard hybrid iterative reconstruction (IR) method for DS‐FFS CT, in terms of spatial resolution, noise profile, and image artifacts through both phantoms and clinical scan datasets. Experiments show that our reconstruction has a higher spatial resolution, with a Task‐Based Modulation Transfer Function (MTF task ) consistently higher than the clinical standard hybrid IR. In addition, our reconstruction shows a reduced magnitude of image undersampling artifacts than the clinical standard. Conclusions By modeling a precise geometry and avoiding data rebinning or interpolation, our physics‐based reconstruction achieves a higher spatial resolution and fewer image artifacts with smaller magnitude than the clinical standard hybrid IR.

Wang, Xiao↗

Livermore tomography tools: Accurate, fast, and flexible software for tomographic science

Livermore Tomography Tools (LTT) is a customizable scientific software package that enables a broad range of research and development efforts into computed tomography (CT). Here, it was developed to process x-ray and neutron CT data accurately and rapidly from raw detector counts to reconstructed volumes with the flexibility to handle many special cases. LTT fulfills long-term CT software goals to provide quantitatively accurate results reported in physical units (e.g., mm -1 or cm -1 ) while exploiting all available computational advantages to maximize speed. Written in C/C++ with support for multiple CPUs and GPUs, LTT runs on many computing platforms (Linux/Unix, Windows, and Mac; laptops to supercomputers). As a result, LTT can:process data acquired from various custom-built and commercially available CT scanners, model and simulate x-ray and neutron interactions to encourage algorithm prototyping, and allow for rapid insertion of the latest algorithms.We describe LTT’s software architecture, user interfaces, and its 88 algorithms (as of this writing) for pre-processing, reconstruction, post-processing, and simulation that support many scanner geometries (parallel-, fan-, cone-beam, and custom). Several applications are presented that illustrate LTT’s accuracy, speed, and flexibility relative to other solutions.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

LivermorE Al Projector for Computed Tomography Tasks

With recent computed tomography (CT) efforts using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deep Learning (DL)techniques, there is a strong need for differentiable forward projection models that can be integrated into existing DL frameworks. We developed a pytorch-based package library providing differentiable forward and back projection functions and classes to facilitate forward and back propagation of CT operations in the training procedure. This forward projectors support three CT projection geometries: cone, parallel and modular beams. This package can be used with both CPU and GPU with CUDA.

Kim, Hyojin↗

Distributed Stochastic Optimization of a Neural Representation Network for Time-Space Tomography Reconstruction

4D time-space reconstruction of dynamic events or deforming objects using X-ray computed tomography (CT) is an important inverse problem in non-destructive evaluation. Conventional back-projection based reconstruction methods assume that the object remains static for the duration of several tens or hundreds of X-ray projection measurement images (reconstruction of consecutive limited-angle CT scans). However, this is an unrealistic assumption for many in-situ experiments that causes spurious artifacts and inaccurate morphological reconstructions of the object. To solve this problem, we propose to perform a 4D time-space reconstruction using a distributed implicit neural representation (DINR) network that is trained using a novel distributed stochastic training algorithm. Our DINR network learns to reconstruct the object at its output by iterative optimization of its network parameters such that the measured projection images best match the output of the CT forward measurement model. Here, we use a forward measurement model that is a function of the DINR outputs at a sparsely sampled set of continuous valued 4D object coordinates. Unlike previous neural representation architectures that forward and back propagate through dense voxel grids that sample the object's entire time-space coordinates, we only propagate through the DINR at a small subset of object coordinates in each iteration resulting in an order-of-magnitude reduction in memory and compute for training. DINR leverages distributed computation across several compute nodes and GPUs to produce high-fidelity 4D time-space reconstructions. We use both simulated parallel-beam and experimental cone-beam X-ray CT datasets to demonstrate the superior performance of our approach.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗