Impact of photon counting detector spectral distortion on virtual non-contrast CT imaging

Mang Feng; Xu Ji; Ran Zhang; Jessica R. Miller; Guang-Hong Chen; Ke Li

doi:10.1117/12.2549737

16 March 2020 Impact of photon counting detector spectral distortion on virtual non-contrast CT imaging

Mang Feng, Xu Ji, Ran Zhang, Jessica R. Miller, Guang-Hong Chen, Ke Li

Proceedings Volume 11312, Medical Imaging 2020: Physics of Medical Imaging; 113121J (2020) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2549737
Event: SPIE Medical Imaging, 2020, Houston, Texas, United States

Abstract

Virtual non-contrast (VNC) CT images derived from multi-energy CT data have demonstrated many valuable clinical applications. However, VNC CT has not yet established itself as a technology that can reliably replace the true non-contrast CT. One commonly observed phenomenon is an erroneous removal or reduction of calcium signal in VNC images. The purpose of this work is to develop a photon counting CT-based method to decouple the iodine signal from the calcium signal to achieve VNC CT imaging. Thanks to the energy resolving capability of the photon counting detector (PCD), a photon counting CT enables all single kV CT data to carry additional spectral information needed for VNC CT reconstruction. However, the energy discriminating capability of a real PCD system is far from ideal, which can severely degrade the fidelity of the encoded spectral information and the efficiency of the material decomposition. In this work, a physics-based model of the PCD energy response function was developed and experimentally validated. By leveraging this model, a method was developed to correct the distorted spectral information in the measured PCD energy bin data, allowing the true post image object spectrum to be estimated to accomplish accurate three-material decomposition and VNC CT reconstruction. Both numerical simulation and experimental results demonstrated that the proposed spectral distortion correction method can effectively improve the CT number accuracy of both iodine-containing vessels and calcium-containing bony structures in VNC CT images.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

Mang Feng, Xu Ji, Ran Zhang, Jessica R. Miller, Guang-Hong Chen, and Ke Li "Impact of photon counting detector spectral distortion on virtual non-contrast CT imaging", Proc. SPIE 11312, Medical Imaging 2020: Physics of Medical Imaging, 113121J (16 March 2020); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2549737

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