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Medical Physics / Volume 37 / Issue 8 / RADIATION THERAPY PHYSICS

Med. Phys. 37, 4186 (2010); http://dx.doi.org/10.1118/1.3460341 (7 pages)

A novel solid-angle tomosynthesis (SAT) scanning scheme

Jin Zhang and Cedric Yu

Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, 22 S. Greene Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21201 and Xcision Medical System, LLC, 12707 Chapel Chase Drive, Clarksville, Maryland 21209

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(Received 8 October 2009; accepted 11 June 2010; revised 10 June 2010; published online 21 July 2010)

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Purpose: Digital tomosynthesis (DTS) recently gained extensive research interests in both diagnostic and radiation therapy fields. Conventional DTS images are generated by scanning an x-ray source and flat-panel detector pair on opposite sides of an object, with the scanning trajectory on a one-dimensional curve. A novel tomosynthesis method named solid-angle tomosynthesis (SAT) is proposed, where the x-ray source scans on an arbitrary shaped two-dimensional surface.
Methods: An iterative algorithm in the form of total variation regulated expectation maximization is developed for SAT image reconstruction. The feasibility and effectiveness of SAT is corroborated by computer simulation studies using three-dimensional (3D) numerical phantoms including a 3D Shepp–Logan phantom and a volumetric CT image set of a human breast.
Results: SAT is able to cover more space in Fourier domain more uniformly than conventional DTS. Greater coverage and more isotropy in the frequency domain translate to fewer artifacts and more accurately restored features in the in-plane reconstruction.
Conclusions: Comparing with conventional DTS, SAT allows cone-shaped x-ray beams to project from more solid angles, thus provides more coverage in the spatial-frequency domain, resulting in better quality of reconstructed image.

© 2010 American Association of Physicists in Medicine

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank Professor John Boone of the University of California Davis Medical Center for providing the digital breast phantom. The authors also thank the anonymous Associate Editor, whose extraordinary efforts greatly help improve the quality of this work through iterations.

Article Outline

  1. INTRODUCTION
    1. Conventional DTS
    2. Investigation on image artifacts of DTS
  2. METHODS
    1. Reconstruction algorithm
    2. Computer simulations
      1. Shepp–Logan phantom
      2. Digital breast phantom
  3. RESULTS
  4. DISCUSSIONS
  5. CONCLUSIONS
Digital Object Identifier
http://dx.doi.org/10.1118/1.3460341

KEYWORDS and PACS

Keywords

computerised tomography, diagnostic radiography, expectation-maximisation algorithm, image reconstruction, iterative methods, medical image processing, phantoms, DTS, tomosynthesis, IGRT

PACS

PUBLICATION DATA

ISSN

0094-2405 (print)  

Publisher

$abstract.society.value is a Member of CrossRef American Association of Physicists in Medicine

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Medical Physics is an official science journal of the AAPM and of the COMP/CCPM/IOMP
William R. Hendee, Editor
Departments of Radiology, Radiation Oncology, Biophysics, Community and Public Health, Medical College of Wisconsin
One Physics Ellipse
College Park, Maryland 20740
301-209-3352

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