Cardiac CT: A system architecture study

Article type: Research Article

Authors: FitzGerald, Paul^{a; *} | Bennett, James^b | Carr, Jeffrey^c | Edic, Peter M.^a | Entrikin, Daniel^c | Gao, Hewei^a | Iatrou, Maria^a | Jin, Yannan^a | Liu, Baodong^{c; d} | Wang, Ge^{b; d; e} | Wang, Jiao^a | Yin, Zhye^a | Yu, Hengyong^{c; d} | Zeng, Kai^a | De Man, Bruno^a

Affiliations: [a] CT Systems and Applications Laboratory, GE Global Research Center, 1 Research Circle, Niskayuna NY, USA | [b] Biomedical Imaging Division, VT-WFU School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, Virginia Tech., Blacksburg, VA, USA | [c] Department of Radiology, Division of Radiologic Sciences, Wake Forest University Health Sciences, Winston-Salem, NC, USA | [d] Biomedical Imaging Division, VT-WFU School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, Wake Forest University Health Sciences, Winston-Salem, NC, USA | [e] Department of Biomedical Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author: Paul FitzGerald, 1 Research Circle, Niskayuna, NY 12309, USA. Tel.: +1 518 387 7752; Fax: +1 518 387 5975; E-mail: fitzgerald@ge.com.

Abstract: BACKGROUND:We are interested in exploring dedicated, high-performance cardiac CT systems optimized to provide the best tradeoff between system cost, image quality, and radiation dose. OBJECTIVE:We sought to identify and evaluate a broad range of CT architectures that could provide an optimal, dedicated cardiac CT solution. METHODS:We identified and evaluated thirty candidate architectures using consistent design choices. We defined specific evaluation metrics related to cost and performance. We then scored the candidates versus the defined metrics. Lastly, we applied a weighting system to combine scores for all metrics into a single overall score for each architecture. CT experts with backgrounds in cardiovascular radiology, x-ray physics, CT hardware and CT algorithms performed the scoring and weighting. RESULTS:We found nearly a twofold difference between the most and the least promising candidate architectures. Architectures employed by contemporary commercial diagnostic CT systems were among the highest-scoring candidates. We identified six architectures that show sufficient promise to merit further in-depth analysis and comparison. CONCLUSION:Our results suggest that contemporary diagnostic CT system architectures outperform most other candidates that we evaluated, but the results for a few alternatives were relatively close. We selected six representative high-scoring candidates for more detailed design and further comparative evaluation.

Keywords: Computed tomography, CT, cardiovascular disease, cardiovascular imaging

DOI: 10.3233/XST-160537

Journal: Journal of X-Ray Science and Technology, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 43-65, 2016