New techniques for chest digital tomosynthesis imaging

• Main Author: You, Zhicheng
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01.01.2011
• Subjects: Medical imaging; Nuclear physics
• ISBN: 1267248629; 9781267248626

Chest digital tomosynthesis (DTS) imaging is currently being studied as an adjunct of conventional chest radiography for better separation of abnormality from the overlapping anatomy. Current DTS techniques have employed a linear or curvilinear scanning pattern to generate limited angle projection views. We have proposed two new scanning techniques: 2D DTS and two-view DTS technique. With 2D DTS technique, the x-ray sources is scanned over a square area to more effectively blur out objects outside the fulcrum; with two-view DTS techniques, the DTS projections are recorded from two different angles. The aim of this work is to demonstrate and compare these two newly developed scanning techniques with the 1D technique for DTS chest imaging using computer simulations. Experiments were also performed to investigate the two-view DTS technique. For fixed angular range and number of projection views, 2D DTS and two-view DTS were found to more effectively blur the off-fulcrum objects than that with 1D scanning patterns. They were also found to exhibit thinner effective slice thickness. The improvement is achieved by reducing the contrast of the artifacts from off-fulcrum and by increasing the contrast of in-fulcrum objects.