Lazos D, Williamson JF. Monte Carlo evaluation of scatter mitigation strategies in cone-beam CT.
Med Phys 2010;
37:5456-70. [PMID:
21089782 DOI:
10.1118/1.3488978]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/07/2022] Open
Abstract
PURPOSE
To investigate the efficacy of two widely used scatter mitigation methods: antiscatter grids (ASGs) and beam modulating with bowtie filters (BTFs), in combination with subtractive scatter correction or zeroth order normalization phantom calibration, for improving image noise, contrast, contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), and image uniformity for on-board cone-beam CT (CBCT) imaging systems used for image-guided radiation therapy.
METHODS
PTRAN Monte Carlo CBCT x-ray projections of head and pelvic phantoms were calculated for combinations of beam-modulation and scatter rejection methods and images were reconstructed by in-house developed software. In addition, a simple one-dimensional analytic model was developed to predict scatter-to-primary ratio (SPR) and CNR as a function of cylindrical phantom thickness, ASG transmission, and beam modulation with bow-tie filters.
RESULTS
ASGs were found to have slightly negative or no effect on head phantom image CNR and to modestly improve CNR (10%-20%) in pelvic phantom images. However, scatter subtraction and norm-phantom calibration perform better when applied on data acquired with ASGs. Scatter subtraction improves CT number accuracy, but increases noise, and in high SPR/low primary-photon transmission scenarios can dramatically reduce CNR and introduce streaking artifacts. The BTF is found to reduce SPR and image noise, resulting in a better trade-off between CNR and imaging dose, but introduces a circular band artifact.
CONCLUSIONS
Our study shows that ASGs have a modest positive impact in pelvic scans and negative in head scans, scatter subtraction improves the HU accuracy but reduces CNR, while BTF has a clearly positive effect.
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