Cone-beam CT of traumatic brain injury using statistical reconstruction with a post-artifact-correction noise model

H. Dang, J. W. Stayman, A. Sisniega, J. Xu, W. Zbijewski, J. Yorkston, N. Aygun, V. Koliatsos, J. H. Siewerdsen

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major cause of death and disability. The current front-line imaging modality for TBI detection is CT, which reliably detects intracranial hemorrhage (fresh blood contrast 30-50 HU, size down to 1 mm) in non-contrast-enhanced exams. Compared to CT, flat-panel detector (FPD) cone-beam CT (CBCT) systems offer lower cost, greater portability, and smaller footprint suitable for point-of-care deployment. We are developing FPD-CBCT to facilitate TBI detection at the point-of-care such as in emergent, ambulance, sports, and military applications. However, current FPD-CBCT systems generally face challenges in low-contrast, soft-tissue imaging. Model-based reconstruction can improve image quality in soft-tissue imaging compared to conventional filtered back-projection (FBP) by leveraging high-fidelity forward model and sophisticated regularization. In FPD-CBCT TBI imaging, measurement noise characteristics undergo substantial change following artifact correction, resulting in non-negligible noise amplification. In this work, we extend the penalized weighted least-squares (PWLS) image reconstruction to include the two dominant artifact corrections (scatter and beam hardening) in FPD-CBCT TBI imaging by correctly modeling the variance change following each correction. Experiments were performed on a CBCT test-bench using an anthropomorphic phantom emulating intra-parenchymal hemorrhage in acute TBI, and the proposed method demonstrated an improvement in blood-brain contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR = 14.2) compared to FBP (CNR = 9.6) and PWLS using conventional weights (CNR = 11.6) at fixed spatial resolution (1 mm edge-spread width at the target contrast). The results support the hypothesis that FPD-CBCT can fulfill the image quality requirements for reliable TBI detection, using high-fidelity artifact correction and statistical reconstruction with accurate post-artifact-correction noise models.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationMedical Imaging 2015
Subtitle of host publicationPhysics of Medical Imaging
EditorsChristoph Hoeschen, Despina Kontos, Christoph Hoeschen
PublisherSPIE
ISBN (Electronic)9781628415025
DOIs
StatePublished - 2015
EventMedical Imaging 2015: Physics of Medical Imaging - Orlando, United States
Duration: Feb 22 2015Feb 25 2015

Publication series

NameProgress in Biomedical Optics and Imaging - Proceedings of SPIE
Volume9412
ISSN (Print)1605-7422

Other

OtherMedical Imaging 2015: Physics of Medical Imaging
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityOrlando
Period2/22/152/25/15

Keywords

  • Beam hardening correction
  • Cone-beam CT
  • Measurement noise model
  • Modelbased iterative reconstruction
  • Noise-resolution tradeoff
  • Soft-tissue imaging
  • Traumatic brain injury
  • X-ray scatter

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
  • Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
  • Radiology Nuclear Medicine and imaging
  • Biomaterials

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