Initial results from a prototype whole-body photon-counting computed tomography system

Z. Yu; S. Leng; S. M. Jorgensen; Z. Li; R. Gutjahr; B. Chen; X. Duan; A. F. Halaweish; L. Yu; E. L. Ritman; C. H. McCollough

doi:10.1117/12.2082739

18 March 2015 Initial results from a prototype whole-body photon-counting computed tomography system

Z. Yu, S. Leng, S. M. Jorgensen, Z. Li, R. Gutjahr, B. Chen, X. Duan, A. F. Halaweish, L. Yu, E. L. Ritman, C. H. McCollough

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 9412, Medical Imaging 2015: Physics of Medical Imaging; 94120W (2015) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2082739
Event: SPIE Medical Imaging, 2015, Orlando, Florida, United States

Abstract

X-ray computed tomography (CT) with energy-discriminating capabilities presents exciting opportunities for increased dose efficiency and improved material decomposition analyses. However, due to constraints imposed by the inability of photon-counting detectors (PCD) to respond accurately at high photon flux, to date there has been no clinical application of PCD-CT. Recently, our lab installed a research prototype system consisting of two x-ray sources and two corresponding detectors, one using an energy-integrating detector (EID) and the other using a PCD. In this work, we report the first third-party evaluation of this prototype CT system using both phantoms and a cadaver head. The phantom studies demonstrated several promising characteristics of the PCD sub-system, including improved longitudinal spatial resolution and reduced beam hardening artifacts, relative to the EID sub-system. More importantly, we found that the PCD sub-system offers excellent pulse pileup control in cases of x-ray flux up to 550 mA at 140 kV, which corresponds to approximately 2.5×10¹¹ photons per cm² per second. In an anthropomorphic phantom and a cadaver head, the PCD sub-system provided image quality comparable to the EID sub-system for the same dose level. Our results demonstrate the potential of the prototype system to produce clinically-acceptable images in vivo.

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Z. Yu, S. Leng, S. M. Jorgensen, Z. Li, R. Gutjahr, B. Chen, X. Duan, A. F. Halaweish, L. Yu, E. L. Ritman, and C. H. McCollough "Initial results from a prototype whole-body photon-counting computed tomography system", Proc. SPIE 9412, Medical Imaging 2015: Physics of Medical Imaging, 94120W (18 March 2015); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2082739

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