ABSTRACT
The spatial resolution of diagnostic Computed Tomography (CT) has increased substantially, and 3D isotropic sub-millimeter spatial resolution in both axial and helical scan modes is routinely available in the clinic. However, driven by advanced clinical applications, the pursuit for higher spatial resolution and free of aliasing artifacts in diagnostic CT has never stopped. A method to accommodate focal spot wobbling at an arbitrary number of projection views per gantry rotation in CT is presented and evaluated here. The method employs a beta-correction scheme in the row-wise fan-to-parallel rebinning to transform the native cone beam geometry into the cone-parallel geometry under which existing 3D weighted cone beam filtered backprojection algorithms can be utilized for image reconstruction. The experimental evaluation shows that the row-wise fan-to-parallel rebinning with the beta-correction can increase the quantitative in-plane spatial resolution (Modulation Transfer Function) substantially, while the visual spatial resolution can be enhanced significantly. Consequently, the architectural designers of CT scanners are no longer constrained to choosing the number of projection views per rotation determined by gantry geometry. Instead, they can choose the number of projection views per rotation to optimize the trade-offs between in-plane spatial resolution and noise characteristics. Therefore, the presented method is of practical relevance in the architectural design of state-of-the-art diagnostic CT.
Subject(s)
Algorithms , Cone-Beam Computed Tomography/methods , Image Processing, Computer-Assisted/methods , Artifacts , Phantoms, Imaging , TungstenABSTRACT
A 3D weighting scheme have been proposed previously to reconstruct images at both helical and axial scans in stat-of-the-art volumetric CT scanners for diagnostic imaging. Such a 3D weighting can be implemented in the manner of either ray-driven or pixel-drive, depending on the available computation resources. An experimental study is conducted in this paper to evaluate the difference between the ray-driven and pixel-driven implementations of the 3D weighting from the perspective of image quality, while their computational complexity is analyzed theoretically. Computer simulated data and several phantoms, such as the helical body phantom and humanoid chest phantom, are employed in the experimental study, showing that both the ray-driven and pixel-driven 3D weighting provides superior image quality for diagnostic imaging in clinical applications. With the availability of image reconstruction engine at increasing computational power, it is believed that the pixel-driven 3D weighting will be dominantly employed in state-of-the-art volumetric CT scanners over clinical applications.