Jiangkun Liu

Performance Investigation of a Hospital-grade X-ray Tube-based Differential Phase-contrast Cone Beam CT System

Differential phase contrast technique could be the next breakthrough in the field of CT imaging. While traditional absorption-based X-ray CT imaging is inefficient at differentiating soft tissues, phase-contrast technique offers great advantage as being able to produce higher contrast images utilizing the phase information of objects. Our long term goal is to develop a gantry-based hospital-grade X-ray tube differential phase contrast cone-beam CT (DPC-CBCT) technology which is able to achieve higher contrast noise ratio (CNR) in soft tissue imaging without increasing the dose level. Based on the micro-focus system built last year, a bench-top hospital-grade X-ray tube DPC-CBCT system is designed and constructed. The DPC-CBCT system consists of an X-ray source, i.e. a hospital-grade X-ray tube and a source grating, a high-resolution detector, a rotating phantom holder, a phase grating and an analyzer grating. Threedimensional (3-D) phase-coefficients are reconstructed, providing us with images enjoying higher CNR than, yet equivalent dose level to, a conventional CBCT scan. Three important aspects of the system are investigated: a) The The systems performance in term of CNR of the reconstruction image with regard to dose levels, b) the impacts of different phase stepping schemes, i.e. 5 steps to 8 steps, in term of CNR on the reconstruction images, and c) the influence of magnification or position of the phantom on image quality, chiefly CNR. The investigations are accomplished via phantom study.

Investigation of Moiré pattern-based phase retrieval approach for differential phase-contrast cone beam CT imaging using a hospital-grade tube

The phase stepping algorithm is commonly used for phase retrieval in grating-based differential phase-contrast (DPC) imaging, which requires multiple intensity images to compute one DPC image. It is not efficient for data acquisition, especially in the case of dynamic imaging using either DPC imaging or DPC-based come beam CT (DPC-CBCT) imaging. A Fourier transform-based approach has been developed for fringe pattern analysis in optics, and it was recently implemented into a synchrotron-based DPC tomography system. In this research, this approach is further developed for a bench-top DPC-CBCT imaging system with a hospital-grade x-ray tube. The key idea is to separate carrier fringes and object information in Fourier domain of the interferogram and to reconstruct the differentiated phase information using the object information. Only one interferogram is required for phase retrieval at a cost of spatial resolution. The fringes of moiré patterns are used as the carrier fringes, and a phantom is scanned to evaluate the approach. Various interferograms with different carrier fringe frequencies are investigated and the reconstruction image quality is evaluated in terms of contrast, noise and sharpness. The results indicated that the DPC images can be effectively retrieved using the Fourier transform-based approach and the reconstructed phase coefficient showed better contrast compared to that of attenuation-based contrast. The spatial resolution is acceptable in the phantom studies although it is not as good as the results of phase-stepping approach. The Fourier transform-based phase retrieval approach is able to greatly simplify data acquisition, to improve the temporal resolution and to make it possible for dynamic DPC-CBCT imaging. It is promising for perfusion imaging where spatial resolution is not a concern.

Dynamic cone beam CT angiography of carotid and cerebral arteries using canine model

PURPOSE This research is designed to develop and evaluate a flat-panel detector-based dynamic cone beam CT system for dynamic angiography imaging, which is able to provide both dynamic functional information and dynamic anatomic information from one multirevolution cone beam CT scan. METHODS A dynamic cone beam CT scan acquired projections over four revolutions within a time window of 40 s after contrast agent injection through a femoral vein to cover the entire wash-in and wash-out phases. A dynamic cone beam CT reconstruction algorithm was utilized and a novel recovery method was developed to correct the time-enhancement curve of contrast flow. From the same data set, both projection-based subtraction and reconstruction-based subtraction approaches were utilized and compared to remove the background tissues and visualize the 3D vascular structure to provide the dynamic anatomic information. RESULTS Through computer simulations, the new recovery algorithm for dynamic time-enhancement curves was optimized and showed excellent accuracy to recover the actual contrast flow. Canine model experiments also indicated that the recovered time-enhancement curves from dynamic cone beam CT imaging agreed well with that of an IV-digital subtraction angiography (DSA) study. The dynamic vascular structures reconstructed using both projection-based subtraction and reconstruction-based subtraction were almost identical as the differences between them were comparable to the background noise level. At the enhancement peak, all the major carotid and cerebral arteries and the Circle of Willis could be clearly observed. CONCLUSIONS The proposed dynamic cone beam CT approach can accurately recover the actual contrast flow, and dynamic anatomic imaging can be obtained with high isotropic 3D resolution. This approach is promising for diagnosis and treatment planning of vascular diseases and strokes.

Enhancement of breast calcification visualization and detection using a modified PG method in Cone Beam Breast CT

Cone Beam Breast CT is a promising diagnostic modality in breast imaging. Its isotropic 3D spatial resolution enhances the characterization of micro-calcifications in breasts that might not be easily distinguishable in mammography. However, due to dose level considerations, it is beneficial to further enhance the visualization of calcifications in Cone Beam Breast CT images that might be masked by noise. In this work, the Papoulis-Gerchberg method was modified and implemented in Cone Beam Breast CT images to improve the visualization and detectability of calcifications. First, the PG method was modified and applied to the projections acquired during the scanning process; its effects on the reconstructed images were analyzed by measuring the Modulation Transfer Function and the Noise Power Spectrum. Second, Cone Beam Breast CT images acquired at different dose levels were pre-processed using this technique to enhance the visualization of calcification. Finally, a computer-aided diagnostic algorithm was utilized to evaluate the efficacy of this method to improve calcification detectability. The results demonstrated that this technique can effectively improve image quality by improving the Modulation Transfer Function with a minor increase in noise level. Consequently, the visualization and detectability of calcifications were improved in Cone Beam Breast CT images. This technique was also proved to be useful in reducing the x-ray dose without degrading visualization and detectability of calcifications.

Evaluation of differential phase contrast cone beam CT imaging system

Grating-based differential phase contrast (DPC) imaging enables the use of a hospital-grade X-ray tube, but compromises the image quality due to insufficiently coherent illumination. In this research, a bench-top DPC cone beam CT (DPC-CBCT) was systematically evaluated and compared with the traditional attenuation-based CBCT in terms of contrast to noise ratio, noise property, and contrast resolution through phantom studies. In order to evaluate DPC-CBCT for soft tissue imaging, breast specimen and small animal studies were carried out. Phantom studies indicate that phase image has lower-frequency noise, higher CNR, and improved contrast resolution. However, phase image quality was degraded in soft tissue imaging due to coherence loss caused by small-angle scattering. Hence dark-field imaging was introduced to quantitatively investigate small-angle scattering caused by an object. Experimental results indicate that inhomogeneous objects affect phase contrast imaging, phase image is more sensitive to noise, and its performance is material dependent. Dark-field imaging could also be used to locate and reduce phase image noise and artifact caused by small-angle scattering.

Phantom study for volume-of-interest breast imaging using differential phase contrast cone beam CT (DPC-CBCT)

Differential phase contrast (DPC) imaging is reported to be able to deliver higher contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) compared to attenuation-based x-ray imaging technologies. Due to the nature of attenuation contrast, the conventional cone beam CT (CBCT) technology has limitations in characterizing breast lesions with sufficiently high contrast and spatial resolution. As an alternative, the grating-based DPC-CBCT technology is potentially a powerful tool for breast imaging. However, limited by current grating fabrication techniques, a full field-of-view (FOV) that covers the whole breast is not practical at present. Previously by our group, a volume-of-interest (VOI) imaging method, which incorporates DPC-CBCT into a dedicated attenuation-based CBCT imaging system, was presented. In the method, the CBCT scan was performed to localize the suspicious volume and then a VOI scan by DPC-CBCT characterized the suspicious volume with higher contrast and resolution. In this work, we investigated the performance of DPC-CBCT VOI imaging by performing a phantom study using our bench-top DPC-CBCT system with a hospital-grade X-ray tube. A cylinder water phantom with a size of over twice of the FOV of our DPC-CBCT system was designed. The phantom contains four different materials and it was scanned at four different dose levels. In thick object scanning, phase wrapping errors cause artifacts for DPC-CBCT VOI imaging. A low-pass filter was designed to reduce the artifacts. In order to compare the DPC-CBCT VOI with attenuation-based CBCT, the scanning data were used to reconstruct both phase coefficient image and attenuation coefficient image. The reconstructed images will be quantitatively and visually evaluated with regards to contrast, noise level and artifacts.

Effect of coherence loss in differential phase contrast imaging

Coherence property of x-rays is critical in the grating-based differential phase contrast (DPC) imaging because it is the physical foundation that makes any form of phase contrast imaging possible. Loss of coherence is an important experimental issue, which results in increased image noise and reduced object contrast in DPC images and DPC cone beam CT (DPC-CBCT) reconstructions. In this study, experimental results are investigated to characterize the visibility loss (a measurement of coherence loss) in several different applications, including different-sized phantom imaging, specimen imaging and small animal imaging. Key measurements include coherence loss (relative intensity changes in the area of interest in phase-stepping images), contrast and noise level in retrieved DPC images, and contrast and noise level in reconstructed DPC-CBCT images. The influence of size and composition of imaged object (uniform object, bones, skin hairs, tissues, and etc) will be quantified. The same investigation is also applied for moiré pattern-based DPC-CBCT imaging with the same exposure dose. A theoretical model is established to relate coherence loss, noise level in phase stepping images (or moiré images), and the contrast and noise in the retrieved DPC images. Experiment results show that uniform objects lead to a small coherence loss even when the attenuation is higher, while objects with large amount of small structures result in huge coherence loss even when the attenuation is small. The theoretical model predicts the noise level in retrieved DPC images, and it also suggests a minimum dose required for DPC imaging to compensate for coherence loss.

Investigation of Source Grating Stepping for Differential Phase-contrast Cone Beam CT (DPC-CBCT) System

Differential phase contrast (DPC) imaging, which utilizes phase shift information of X-ray, has the potential of dramatically increasing the contrast in biological sample imaging compared to attenuation-based method that relies on X-ray absorption information, since the X-ray phase is much more sensitive than the attenuation during transmission. In a DPC imaging system, the phase stepping method is widely used to obtain DPC images: at each angle the phase grating is shifted incrementally to produce a set of images and then the so obtained images are used to retrieve DPC image. However, DPC imaging requires a high mechanical precision to perform phase stepping, which is generally one order higher than the period of phase grating. Given that phase grating period is generally 2-4 um, the requirement of mechanical accuracy and stability are very demanding (<0.5um) and difficult to meet in a system with rotating gantry. In this paper, we present a method that is able to greatly relax the requirement of mechanical accuracy and stability by stepping the source grating rather than the analyzer grating. This method is able to increase the systems mechanical tolerance without compromising image quality and make it feasible to install the system on a rotating gantry to perform differential phase-contrast cone beam CT (DPC-CBCT). It is also able to increase the grating shifting precision and as a result improve the reconstructed image quality. Mechanical tolerance investigation and image quality investigation at different phase stepping schemes and different dose levels will be carried out on both the original modality and the new modality, the results will be evaluated and compared. We will deliberately create random mechanical errors in phase stepping and evaluate the resulting DPC images and DPC-CBCT reconstructions. The contrast, noise level and sharpness will be evaluated to assess the influence of mechanical errors. By stepping the source grating, the system is expected to tolerate an error of 6-7 times bigger than that with analyzer grating stepping.

Pseudo super-resolution for improved calcification characterization for Cone Beam Breast CT (CBBCT)

Cone Beam Breast CT imaging (CBBCT) is a promising tool for diagnosis of breast tumors and calcifications. However, as the sizes of calcifications in early stages are very small, it is not easy to distinguish them from background tissues because of the relatively high noise level. Therefore, it is necessary to enhance the visualization of calcifications for accurate detection. In this work, the Papoulis-Gerchberg (PG) method was introduced and modified to improve calcification characterization. PG method is an iterative algorithm of signal extrapolation and has been demonstrated to be very effective in image restoration like super-resolution (SR) and inpainting. The projection images were zoomed by bicubic interpolation method, then the modified PG method were applied to improve the image quality. The reconstruction from processed projection images showed that this approach can effectively improve the image quality by improving the Modulation Transfer Function (MTF) with a limited increase in noise level. As a result, the detectability of calcifications was improved in CBBCT images.

Investigation of Moiré Pattern-based Phase Retrieval Approach for Differential Phase-contrast Cone Beam CT Imaging Using a Hospital-grade Tube

The phase stepping algorithm is commonly used for phase retrieval in grating-based differential phase-contrast (DPC) imaging, which requires multiple intensity images to compute one DPC image. It is not efficient for data acquisition, especially in the case of dynamic imaging using either DPC imaging or DPC-based come beam CT (DPC-CBCT) imaging. A Fourier transform-based approach has been developed for fringe pattern analysis in optics, and it was recently implemented into a synchrotron-based DPC tomography system. In this research, this approach is further developed for a bench-top DPC-CBCT imaging system with a hospital-grade x-ray tube. The key idea is to separate carrier fringes and object information in Fourier domain of the interferogram and to reconstruct the differentiated phase information using the object information. Only one interferogram is required for phase retrieval at a cost of spatial resolution. The fringes of moiré patterns are used as the carrier fringes, and a phantom is scanned to evaluate the approach. Various interferograms with different carrier fringe frequencies are investigated and the reconstruction image quality is evaluated in terms of contrast, noise and sharpness. The results indicated that the DPC images can be effectively retrieved using the Fourier transform-based approach and the reconstructed phase coefficient showed better contrast compared to that of attenuation-based contrast. The spatial resolution is acceptable in the phantom studies although it is not as good as the results of phase-stepping approach. The Fourier transform-based phase retrieval approach is able to greatly simplify data acquisition, to improve the temporal resolution and to make it possible for dynamic DPC-CBCT imaging. It is promising for perfusion imaging where spatial resolution is not a concern.