5,701 research outputs found
State of the art: iterative CT reconstruction techniques
Owing to recent advances in computing power, iterative reconstruction (IR) algorithms have become a clinically viable option in computed tomographic (CT) imaging. Substantial evidence is accumulating about the advantages of IR algorithms over established analytical methods, such as filtered back projection. IR improves image quality through cyclic image processing. Although all available solutions share the common mechanism of artifact reduction and/or potential for radiation dose savings, chiefly due to image noise suppression, the magnitude of these effects depends on the specific IR algorithm. In the first section of this contribution, the technical bases of IR are briefly reviewed and the currently available algorithms released by the major CT manufacturers are described. In the second part, the current status of their clinical implementation is surveyed. Regardless of the applied IR algorithm, the available evidence attests to the substantial potential of IR algorithms for overcoming traditional limitations in CT imaging
Multi-GPU Acceleration of Iterative X-ray CT Image Reconstruction
X-ray computed tomography is a widely used medical imaging modality for screening and diagnosing diseases and for image-guided radiation therapy treatment planning. Statistical iterative reconstruction (SIR) algorithms have the potential to significantly reduce image artifacts by minimizing a cost function that models the physics and statistics of the data acquisition process in X-ray CT. SIR algorithms have superior performance compared to traditional analytical reconstructions for a wide range of applications including nonstandard geometries arising from irregular sampling, limited angular range, missing data, and low-dose CT. The main hurdle for the widespread adoption of SIR algorithms in multislice X-ray CT reconstruction problems is their slow convergence rate and associated computational time.
We seek to design and develop fast parallel SIR algorithms for clinical X-ray CT scanners. Each of the following approaches is implemented on real clinical helical CT data acquired from a Siemens Sensation 16 scanner and compared to the straightforward implementation of the Alternating Minimization (AM) algorithm of O’Sullivan and Benac [1]. We parallelize the computationally expensive projection and backprojection operations by exploiting the massively parallel hardware architecture of 3 NVIDIA TITAN X Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) devices with CUDA programming tools and achieve an average speedup of 72X over a straightforward CPU implementation. We implement a multi-GPU based voxel-driven multislice analytical reconstruction algorithm called Feldkamp-Davis-Kress (FDK) [2] and achieve an average overall speedup of 1382X over the baseline CPU implementation by using 3 TITAN X GPUs. Moreover, we propose a novel adaptive surrogate-function based optimization scheme for the AM algorithm, resulting in more aggressive update steps in every iteration. On average, we double the convergence rate of our baseline AM algorithm and also improve image quality by using the adaptive surrogate function. We extend the multi-GPU and adaptive surrogate-function based acceleration techniques to dual-energy reconstruction problems as well. Furthermore, we design and develop a GPU-based deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to denoise simulated low-dose X-ray CT images. Our experiments show significant improvements in the image quality with our proposed deep CNN-based algorithm against some widely used denoising techniques including Block Matching 3-D (BM3D) and Weighted Nuclear Norm Minimization (WNNM). Overall, we have developed novel fast, parallel, computationally efficient methods to perform multislice statistical reconstruction and image-based denoising on clinically-sized datasets
High resolution image reconstruction with constrained, total-variation minimization
This work is concerned with applying iterative image reconstruction, based on
constrained total-variation minimization, to low-intensity X-ray CT systems
that have a high sampling rate. Such systems pose a challenge for iterative
image reconstruction, because a very fine image grid is needed to realize the
resolution inherent in such scanners. These image arrays lead to
under-determined imaging models whose inversion is unstable and can result in
undesirable artifacts and noise patterns. There are many possibilities to
stabilize the imaging model, and this work proposes a method which may have an
advantage in terms of algorithm efficiency. The proposed method introduces
additional constraints in the optimization problem; these constraints set to
zero high spatial frequency components which are beyond the sensing capability
of the detector. The method is demonstrated with an actual CT data set and
compared with another method based on projection up-sampling.Comment: This manuscript appears in the proceedings of the 2010 IEEE medical
imaging conferenc
Four-dimensional Cone Beam CT Reconstruction and Enhancement using a Temporal Non-Local Means Method
Four-dimensional Cone Beam Computed Tomography (4D-CBCT) has been developed
to provide respiratory phase resolved volumetric imaging in image guided
radiation therapy (IGRT). Inadequate number of projections in each phase bin
results in low quality 4D-CBCT images with obvious streaking artifacts. In this
work, we propose two novel 4D-CBCT algorithms: an iterative reconstruction
algorithm and an enhancement algorithm, utilizing a temporal nonlocal means
(TNLM) method. We define a TNLM energy term for a given set of 4D-CBCT images.
Minimization of this term favors those 4D-CBCT images such that any anatomical
features at one spatial point at one phase can be found in a nearby spatial
point at neighboring phases. 4D-CBCT reconstruction is achieved by minimizing a
total energy containing a data fidelity term and the TNLM energy term. As for
the image enhancement, 4D-CBCT images generated by the FDK algorithm are
enhanced by minimizing the TNLM function while keeping the enhanced images
close to the FDK results. A forward-backward splitting algorithm and a
Gauss-Jacobi iteration method are employed to solve the problems. The
algorithms are implemented on GPU to achieve a high computational efficiency.
The reconstruction algorithm and the enhancement algorithm generate visually
similar 4D-CBCT images, both better than the FDK results. Quantitative
evaluations indicate that, compared with the FDK results, our reconstruction
method improves contrast-to-noise-ratio (CNR) by a factor of 2.56~3.13 and our
enhancement method increases the CNR by 2.75~3.33 times. The enhancement method
also removes over 80% of the streak artifacts from the FDK results. The total
computation time is ~460 sec for the reconstruction algorithm and ~610 sec for
the enhancement algorithm on an NVIDIA Tesla C1060 GPU card.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures, 2 table
GPU-based Iterative Cone Beam CT Reconstruction Using Tight Frame Regularization
X-ray imaging dose from serial cone-beam CT (CBCT) scans raises a clinical
concern in most image guided radiation therapy procedures. It is the goal of
this paper to develop a fast GPU-based algorithm to reconstruct high quality
CBCT images from undersampled and noisy projection data so as to lower the
imaging dose. For this purpose, we have developed an iterative tight frame (TF)
based CBCT reconstruction algorithm. A condition that a real CBCT image has a
sparse representation under a TF basis is imposed in the iteration process as
regularization to the solution. To speed up the computation, a multi-grid
method is employed. Our GPU implementation has achieved high computational
efficiency and a CBCT image of resolution 512\times512\times70 can be
reconstructed in ~5 min. We have tested our algorithm on a digital NCAT phantom
and a physical Catphan phantom. It is found that our TF-based algorithm is able
to reconstrct CBCT in the context of undersampling and low mAs levels. We have
also quantitatively analyzed the reconstructed CBCT image quality in terms of
modulation-transfer-function and contrast-to-noise ratio under various scanning
conditions. The results confirm the high CBCT image quality obtained from our
TF algorithm. Moreover, our algorithm has also been validated in a real
clinical context using a head-and-neck patient case. Comparisons of the
developed TF algorithm and the current state-of-the-art TV algorithm have also
been made in various cases studied in terms of reconstructed image quality and
computation efficiency.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures, accepted by Phys. Med. Bio
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