TY - JOUR
T1 - 64-channel photon-counting computed tomography using a new MPPC-CT system
AU - Kiji, H.
AU - Maruhashi, T.
AU - Toyoda, T.
AU - Kataoka, J.
AU - Arimoto, M.
AU - Sato, D.
AU - Yoshiura, K.
AU - Kobayashi, S.
AU - Kawashima, H.
AU - Terazawa, S.
AU - Shiota, S.
AU - Ikeda, H.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP15H05720 , JP19H04483 , JP20H00669 , JP19K22924 , the Naito Foundation , the Uehara Memorial Foundation , the Casio Science Promotion Foundation , the Key Researchers Development Program at Waseda University , and the JSPS Leading Initiative for Excellent Young Researchers program.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2020/12/21
Y1 - 2020/12/21
N2 - X-ray computed tomography (CT) is a widely used diagnostic tool to visualize the interior of the human body. However, the exposure dose of conventional CT in a single scan is large, typically 10 mSv, and therefore, it is necessary to find ways to reduce the radiation dose. Furthermore, conventional CT does not contain the energy information of individual X-ray photons because the X-ray signals are read out as an integrated form. This causes misidentification of materials. To resolve this issue, we propose a novel photon counting CT (PC-CT) system consisting of multi-pixel photon counters (MPPCs) coupled with high speed scintillators. The system has a 64-channel MPPC array that improves energy information and wide-area imaging. By fine energy adjustment and increasing the number of energy thresholds to six, which were newly implemented in the 64-channel PC-CT system, we succeeded in accurately estimating the concentrations of contrast agents such as iodine and gadolinium. Moreover, for mixed phantoms of iodine and gadolinium, we demonstrate discrimination between them, and estimate the concentrations individually, which cannot be done by conventional CTs. This shows great potential in expanding the applications of X-ray CTs.
AB - X-ray computed tomography (CT) is a widely used diagnostic tool to visualize the interior of the human body. However, the exposure dose of conventional CT in a single scan is large, typically 10 mSv, and therefore, it is necessary to find ways to reduce the radiation dose. Furthermore, conventional CT does not contain the energy information of individual X-ray photons because the X-ray signals are read out as an integrated form. This causes misidentification of materials. To resolve this issue, we propose a novel photon counting CT (PC-CT) system consisting of multi-pixel photon counters (MPPCs) coupled with high speed scintillators. The system has a 64-channel MPPC array that improves energy information and wide-area imaging. By fine energy adjustment and increasing the number of energy thresholds to six, which were newly implemented in the 64-channel PC-CT system, we succeeded in accurately estimating the concentrations of contrast agents such as iodine and gadolinium. Moreover, for mixed phantoms of iodine and gadolinium, we demonstrate discrimination between them, and estimate the concentrations individually, which cannot be done by conventional CTs. This shows great potential in expanding the applications of X-ray CTs.
KW - K-edge imaging
KW - Multipixel photon counter
KW - Photon counting computed tomography
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U2 - 10.1016/j.nima.2020.164610
DO - 10.1016/j.nima.2020.164610
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85090889872
SN - 0168-9002
VL - 984
JO - Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment
JF - Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment
M1 - 164610
ER -