Affiliations: [a] Department of Medical Imaging, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
| [b] Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
| [c] Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA
| [d] Department of Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Srinivasan Vedantham, Ph.D., Professor, Medical Imaging and Biomedical Engineering, University of Arizona, 1501 N Campbell Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85724, USA. Tel.: +1 520 626 6641; E-mail: svedantham@radiology.arizona.edu.
Note: [1] Work performed while at the Department of Radiology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA.
Abstract: BACKGROUND:High-resolution, low-noise detectors with minimal dead-space at chest-wall could improve posterior coverage and microcalcification visibility in the dedicated cone-beam breast CT (CBBCT). However, the smaller field-of-view necessitates laterally-shifted detector geometry to enable optimizing the air-gap for x-ray scatter rejection. OBJECTIVE:To evaluate laterally-shifted detector geometry for CBBCT with clinical projection datasets that provide for anatomical structures and lesions. METHODS:CBBCT projection datasets (n = 17 breasts) acquired with a 40×30 cm detector (1024×768-pixels, 0.388-mm pixels) were truncated along the fan-angle to emulate 20.3×30 cm, 22.2×30 cm and 24.1×30 cm detector formats and correspond to 20, 120, 220 pixels overlap in conjugate views, respectively. Feldkamp-Davis-Kress (FDK) algorithm with 3 different weighting schemes were used for reconstruction. Visual analysis for artifacts and quantitative analysis of root-mean-squared-error (RMSE), absolute difference between truncated and 40×30 cm reconstructions (Diff), and its power spectrum (PSDiff) were performed. RESULTS:Artifacts were observed for 20.3×30 cm, but not for other formats. The 24.1×30 cm provided the best quantitative results with RMSE and Diff (both in units of μ, cm-1) of 4.39×10-3±1.98×10-3 and 4.95×10-4±1.34×10-4, respectively. The PSDiff (>0.3 cycles/mm) was in the order of 10-14μ2mm3 and was spatial-frequency independent. CONCLUSIONS:Laterally-shifted detector CBBCT with at least 220 pixels overlap in conjugate views (24.1×30 cm detector format) provides quantitatively accurate and artifact-free image reconstruction.
