TY - JOUR
T1 - Performance demonstration of a novel photon-counting CT for preclinical application
AU - Toyoda, T.
AU - Kataoka, J.
AU - Sagisaka, M.
AU - Arimoto, M.
AU - Sato, D.
AU - Yoshiura, K.
AU - Kawashima, H.
AU - Kobayashi, S.
AU - Kotoku, J.
AU - Terazawa, S.
AU - Shiota, S.
AU - Ueda, M.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the JST ERATO Grant No. JPMJER2102 and JSPS, Japan KAKENHI Grant No. JP20H00669 , No. JP19H04483 , Japan.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2022/10/1
Y1 - 2022/10/1
N2 - Photon-counting computed tomography (PC-CT) has attracted attention over the last few years as the next-generation CT technique that solves the problems encountered in clinical CT. In PC-CT, dark current and electronic noise can be reduced by setting the energy threshold to exceed the noise level, which leads to a low-dose scan. Furthermore, multiple energy thresholds realize multicolor CT imaging, which is not possible with clinical CT. Recently, we proposed a novel PC-CT system consisting of a multipixel photon counter (MPPC) coupled with a high-speed scintillator, performing simultaneous imaging of multiple contrast agents and estimate concentration. However, the PC-CT images obtained by our PC-CT system faces some limitations, such as degradation of image quality due to the lack of photon statistics and/or image resolution loss due to the pixel size of the detectors. In this study, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the PC-CT images was improved by applying machine-learning models, that is, U-Net and Noise2Noise, to the PC-CT images. In addition, a new imaging method was developed to acquire the high-resolution CT images required for clinical use. As a result, the resolution of the CT images improved from 1.04 mm to 0.77 mm. Finally, the visualization of contrast agents in plants was set as a challenge for the next step towards the clinical application of MPPC-based PC-CT. The results demonstrate that our PC-CT system can provide color imaging not only in phantom-based experiments, but also in plants close to an organism.
AB - Photon-counting computed tomography (PC-CT) has attracted attention over the last few years as the next-generation CT technique that solves the problems encountered in clinical CT. In PC-CT, dark current and electronic noise can be reduced by setting the energy threshold to exceed the noise level, which leads to a low-dose scan. Furthermore, multiple energy thresholds realize multicolor CT imaging, which is not possible with clinical CT. Recently, we proposed a novel PC-CT system consisting of a multipixel photon counter (MPPC) coupled with a high-speed scintillator, performing simultaneous imaging of multiple contrast agents and estimate concentration. However, the PC-CT images obtained by our PC-CT system faces some limitations, such as degradation of image quality due to the lack of photon statistics and/or image resolution loss due to the pixel size of the detectors. In this study, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the PC-CT images was improved by applying machine-learning models, that is, U-Net and Noise2Noise, to the PC-CT images. In addition, a new imaging method was developed to acquire the high-resolution CT images required for clinical use. As a result, the resolution of the CT images improved from 1.04 mm to 0.77 mm. Finally, the visualization of contrast agents in plants was set as a challenge for the next step towards the clinical application of MPPC-based PC-CT. The results demonstrate that our PC-CT system can provide color imaging not only in phantom-based experiments, but also in plants close to an organism.
KW - High-resolution
KW - K-edge imaging
KW - MPPC
KW - Machine learning
KW - Photon-counting CT
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U2 - 10.1016/j.nima.2022.167181
DO - 10.1016/j.nima.2022.167181
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85134826601
SN - 0168-9002
VL - 1040
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 - 167181
ER -