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Characterization of statistical prior image constrained compressed sensing. I. Applications to time-resolved contrast-enhanced CT.

ABSTRACT: Prior image constrained compressed sensing (PICCS) is an image reconstruction framework that takes advantage of a prior image to improve the image quality of CT reconstructions. An interesting question that remains to be investigated is whether or not the introduction of a statistical model of the photon detection in the PICCS reconstruction framework can improve the performance of the algorithm when dealing with high noise projection datasets. The goal of the research presented in this paper is to characterize the noise properties of images reconstructed using PICCS with and without statistical modeling. This paper investigates these properties in the clinical context of time-resolved contrast-enhanced CT.Both numerical phantom studies and an Institutional Review Board approved human subject study were used in this research. The conventional filtered backprojection (FBP), and PICCS with and without the statistical model were applied to each dataset. The prior image used in PICCS was generated by averaging over FBP reconstructions from different time frames of the time-resolved CT exam, thus reducing the noise level. Numerical studies were used to evaluate if the noise characteristics are altered for varying levels of noise, as well as for different object shapes. The dataset acquired in vivo was used to verify that the conclusions reached from numerical studies translate adequately to a clinical case. The results were analyzed using a variety of qualitative and quantitative metrics such as the universal image quality index, spatial maps of the noise standard deviations, the noise uniformity, the noise power spectrum, and the model-observer detectability.The noise characteristics of PICCS were shown to depend on the noise level contained in the data, the level of eccentricity of the object, and whether or not the statistical model was applied. Most differences in the characteristics were observed in the regime of low incident x-ray fluence. No substantial difference was observed between PICCS with and without statistics in the high fluence domain. Objects with a semi-major axis ratio below 0.85 were more accurately reconstructed with lower noise using the statistical implementation. Above that range, for mostly circular objects, the PICCS implementation without the statistical model yielded more accurate images and a lower noise level. At all levels of eccentricity, the noise spatial distribution was more uniform and the model-observer detectability was greater for PICCS with the statistical model. The human subject study was consistent with the results obtained using numerical simulations.For mildly eccentric objects in the low noise regime, PICCS without the noise model yielded equal or better noise level and image quality than the statistical formulation. However, in a vast majority of cases, images reconstructed using statistical PICCS have a noise power spectrum that facilitated the detection of model lesions. The inclusion of a statistical model in the PICCS framework does not always result in improved noise characteristics.

SUBMITTER: Lauzier PT

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3461052 | biostudies-other | 2012 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Project description:The ionizing radiation imparted to patients during computed tomography exams is raising concerns. This paper studies the performance of a scheme called dose reduction using prior image constrained compressed sensing (DR-PICCS). The purpose of this study is to characterize the effects of a statistical model of x-ray detection in the DR-PICCS framework and its impact on spatial resolution.Both numerical simulations with known ground truth and in vivo animal dataset were used in this study. In numerical simulations, a phantom was simulated with Poisson noise and with varying levels of eccentricity. Both the conventional filtered backprojection (FBP) and the PICCS algorithms were used to reconstruct images. In PICCS reconstructions, the prior image was generated using two different denoising methods: a simple Gaussian blur and a more advanced diffusion filter. Due to the lack of shift-invariance in nonlinear image reconstruction such as the one studied in this paper, the concept of local spatial resolution was used to study the sharpness of a reconstructed image. Specifically, a directional metric of image sharpness, the so-called pseudopoint spread function (pseudo-PSF), was employed to investigate local spatial resolution.In the numerical studies, the pseudo-PSF was reduced from twice the voxel width in the prior image down to less than 1.1 times the voxel width in DR-PICCS reconstructions when the statistical model was not included. At the same noise level, when statistical weighting was used, the pseudo-PSF width in DR-PICCS reconstructed images varied between 1.5 and 0.75 times the voxel width depending on the direction along which it was measured. However, this anisotropy was largely eliminated when the prior image was generated using diffusion filtering; the pseudo-PSF width was reduced to below one voxel width in that case. In the in vivo study, a fourfold improvement in CNR was achieved while qualitatively maintaining sharpness; images also had a qualitatively more uniform noise spatial distribution when including a statistical model.DR-PICCS enables to reconstruct CT images with lower noise than FBP and the loss of spatial resolution can be mitigated to a large extent. The introduction of statistical modeling in DR-PICCS may improve some noise characteristics, but it also leads to anisotropic spatial resolution properties. A denoising method, such as the directional diffusion filtering, has been demonstrated to reduce anisotropy in spatial resolution effectively when it was combined with DR-PICCS with statistical modeling.

Project description:Prior image constrained compressed sensing (PICCS) is an image reconstruction framework which incorporates an often available prior image into the compressed sensing objective function. The images are reconstructed using an optimization procedure. In this paper, several alternative unconstrained minimization methods are used to implement PICCS. The purpose is to study and compare the performance of each implementation, as well as to evaluate the performance of the PICCS objective function with respect to image quality.Six different minimization methods are investigated with respect to convergence speed and reconstruction accuracy. These minimization methods include the steepest descent (SD) method and the conjugate gradient (CG) method. These algorithms require a line search to be performed. Thus, for each minimization algorithm, two line searching algorithms are evaluated: a backtracking (BT) line search and a fast Newton-Raphson (NR) line search. The relative root mean square error is used to evaluate the reconstruction accuracy. The algorithm that offers the best convergence speed is used to study the performance of PICCS with respect to the prior image parameter α and the data consistency parameter λ. PICCS is studied in terms of reconstruction accuracy, low-contrast spatial resolution, and noise characteristics. A numerical phantom was simulated and an animal model was scanned using a multirow detector computed tomography (CT) scanner to yield the projection datasets used in this study.For λ within a broad range, the CG method with Fletcher-Reeves formula and NR line search offers the fastest convergence for an equal level of reconstruction accuracy. Using this minimization method, the reconstruction accuracy of PICCS was studied with respect to variations in α and λ. When the number of view angles is varied between 107, 80, 64, 40, 20, and 16, the relative root mean square error reaches a minimum value for α ≈ 0.5. For values of α near the optimal value, the spatial resolution of the reconstructed image remains relatively constant and the noise texture is very similar to that of the prior image, which was reconstructed using the filtered backprojection (FBP) algorithm.Regarding the performance of the minimization methods, the nonlinear CG method with NR line search yields the best convergence speed. Regarding the performance of the PICCS image reconstruction, three main conclusions can be reached. (1) The performance of PICCS is optimal when the weighting parameter of the prior image parameter is selected to be near α = 0.5. (2) The spatial resolution measured for static objects in images reconstructed using PICCS from undersampled datasets is not degraded with respect to the fully-sampled reconstruction for α near its optimal value. (3) The noise texture of PICCS reconstructions is similar to that of the prior image, which was reconstructed using the conventional FBP method.

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Characterization of statistical prior image constrained compressed sensing. I. Applications to time-resolved contrast-enhanced CT.

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