• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.17 no.7
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• pp.1025-1031
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• 2023

We aimed to evaluate the radiation dose and image quality by changing the Scout view voltage in low-dose chest CT (LDCT) and applying scan parameters such as AEC (auto exposure control) and ASIR (adaptive statistical iterative reconstruction) to find the optimal protocol. Scout view voltage was varied at 80, 100, 120, 140 kV and after measuring the dose 5 times using the existing low-dose chest CT protocol, the appropriate kV was selected for the study using the Dose report provided by the equipment. After taking a basic LDCT shot at 120 kV, 30 mAs, ASIR 50% was applied to this condition. Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) were assessed by measuring Background noise (B/N). For dose comparison, CTDI_vol and DLP provided by the equipment were compared and analyzed using the formulas. The results indicated that the protocol of scout 140 + LDCT + ASIR 50 + AEC reduced radiation exposure and improved image quality compared to traditional LDCT, providing an optimal protocol. As demonstrated in the experiment, LDCT screenings for asymptomatic normal individuals are crucial, as they involve concerns over excessive radiation exposure per examination. Therefore, applying appropriate parameters is important, and it is expected to contribute positively to the public health in future LDCT based health screenings.

• Korean Journal of Radiology
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• v.21 no.10
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• pp.1165-1177
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• 2020

Objective: To assess the feasibility of applying a deep learning-based denoising technique to coronary CT angiography (CCTA) along with iterative reconstruction for additional noise reduction. Materials and Methods: We retrospectively enrolled 82 consecutive patients (male:female = 60:22; mean age, 67.0 ± 10.8 years) who had undergone both CCTA and invasive coronary artery angiography from March 2017 to June 2018. All included patients underwent CCTA with iterative reconstruction (ADMIRE level 3, Siemens Healthineers). We developed a deep learning based denoising technique (ClariCT.AI, ClariPI), which was based on a modified U-net type convolutional neural net model designed to predict the possible occurrence of low-dose noise in the originals. Denoised images were obtained by subtracting the predicted noise from the originals. Image noise, CT attenuation, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) were objectively calculated. The edge rise distance (ERD) was measured as an indicator of image sharpness. Two blinded readers subjectively graded the image quality using a 5-point scale. Diagnostic performance of the CCTA was evaluated based on the presence or absence of significant stenosis (≥ 50% lumen reduction). Results: Objective image qualities (original vs. denoised: image noise, 67.22 ± 25.74 vs. 52.64 ± 27.40; SNR [left main], 21.91 ± 6.38 vs. 30.35 ± 10.46; CNR [left main], 23.24 ± 6.52 vs. 31.93 ± 10.72; all p < 0.001) and subjective image quality (2.45 ± 0.62 vs. 3.65 ± 0.60, p < 0.001) improved significantly in the denoised images. The average ERDs of the denoised images were significantly smaller than those of originals (0.98 ± 0.08 vs. 0.09 ± 0.08, p < 0.001). With regard to diagnostic accuracy, no significant differences were observed among paired comparisons. Conclusion: Application of the deep learning technique along with iterative reconstruction can enhance the noise reduction performance with a significant improvement in objective and subjective image qualities of CCTA images.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1994.10a
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• pp.578-582
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• 1994

In this paper reconstructing the internal resistivity and relative permittivity distribution is discussed. The iterative reconstruction method based on Finite Element method and Newton method were used to reconstruct both of resistivity ind permittivity distribution. The Finite Element model of impedance distribution is built in complex field of resistivity and capacitive medium. The reconstruction results based on computer simulated data and experimental data are presented.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.20-25
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• 1980

A singular value decomposition (SVD) pseudo-inversion method has been applied to the image reconstruction from projections. This approach is relatively unknown and differs from conventionally used reconstructioll methods such as the Foxier convolution and iterative techniques. In this paper, two SVD pseudo-inversion methods have been discussed for the search of optimum reconstruction and restoration, one using truncated inverse filtering, the other scalar Wiener filtering. These methods partly overcome the ill-conditioned nature of restoration problems by trading off between noise and signal quality. To test the SVD pseudo-inversion method, simulations were performed from projection data obtained from a phantom using truncated inversefiltering. The results are presented together with some limitations particular to the applications of the method to the general class of 3-D image reconstruction and restoration.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.410-421
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• 2019

Distributed compressed sensing (DCS) states that we can recover the sparse signals from very few linear measurements. Various studies about DCS have been carried out recently. In many practical applications, there is no prior information except for standard sparsity on signals. The typical example is the sparse signals have block-sparse structures whose non-zero coefficients occurring in clusters, while the cluster pattern is usually unavailable as the prior information. To discuss this issue, a new algorithm, called backtracking-based adaptive orthogonal matching pursuit for block distributed compressed sensing (DCSBBAOMP), is proposed. In contrast to existing block methods which consider the single-channel signal reconstruction, the DCSBBAOMP resorts to the multi-channel signals reconstruction. Moreover, this algorithm is an iterative approach, which consists of forward selection and backward removal stages in each iteration. An advantage of this method is that perfect reconstruction performance can be achieved without prior information on the block-sparsity structure. Numerical experiments are provided to illustrate the desirable performance of the proposed method.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.323-330
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• 2014

Image reconstruction is one of the most important processes in CT (Computed tomography) technology. For fast scanning and low dose to the objects, iterative reconstruction is becoming more and more important. In the implementation of iterative reconstruction, projection and backprojection processes are considered to be indispensable parts. However, many approaches for projection and backprojection may result severe image artifacts due to their discrete characteristics and affects the reconstructed image quality. Thus, new approaches for projection and backprojection are highly demanded these days. In this paper, distance-driven approach was evaluated and compared with other conventional methods. The numerical simulator was developed to make the phantoms, and projection and backprojection images were compared using these approaches. As a result, it turned out that there are less artifacts during projection and backprojection in parallel and fan beam geometry.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.353-360
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• 2012

Diverse designs of collimator have been applied to Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) according to the purpose of acquisition; thus, it is necessary to reflect geometric characteristic of each collimator for successive image reconstruction. This study carry out reconstruction algorithm for imaging system in nuclear medicine with pinhole collimator. Especially, we study to solve sampling problem which caused in the system model of pinhole collimator. System model for a maximum likelihood expectation maximization (MLEM) was developed based on the geometry of the collimator. The projector and back-projector were separately implemented based on the ray-driven and voxel-driven methods, respectively, to overcome sparse sampling problem. We perform phantom study for pinhole collimator by using geant4 application for tomographic emission(GATE) simulation tool. The reconstructed images show promising results. Designed iterative reconstruction algorithm with unmatched system model effective to remove sampling problem artefact. Proposed algorithm can be used not only for pinhole collimator but also for various collimator system of imaging system in nuclear medicine.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.11 no.7
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• pp.679-685
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• 2017

Computed tomography has widely been used to diagnose patient disease, and patient dose also increase rapidly. To reduce the patient dose by CT, various techniques have been applied. The iterative reconstruction is used in view of image reconstruction. Image quality of the reconstructed section image through algebraic reconstruction technique, one of iterative reconstruction methods, was examined by the normalized root mean square error. The computer program was written with the Visual C++ under the parallel beam geometry, Shepp-Logan head phantom of $512{\times}512$ size, projections of 360, and detector-pixels of 1,024. The forward and backward projection was realized by Joseph method. The minimum NRMS of 0.108 was obtained after 10 iterations in the regularization parameter of 0.09-0.12, and the optimum image was obtained after 8 and 6 iterations for 0.1% and 0.2% noise. Variation of optimum value of the regularization parameter was observed according to the phantom used. If the ART was used in the reconstruction, the optimal value of the regularization parameter should be found in the case-by-case. By finding the optimal regularization parameter in the algebraic reconstruction technique, the reconstruction time can be reduced.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.33-40
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• 2015

Inverse problem in electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is highly ill-posed therefore prior information is used to mitigate the ill-posedness. Regularization methods are often adopted in solving EIT inverse problem to have satisfactory reconstruction performance. In solving the EIT inverse problem, iterative Gauss-Newton method is generally used due to its accuracy and fast convergence. However, its performance is still suboptimal and mainly depends on the selection of regularization parameter. Although, there are few methods available to determine the regularization parameter such as L-curve method they are sometimes not applicable for all cases. Moreover, regularization parameter is a scalar and it is fixed during iteration process. Therefore, in this paper, a novel method is used to determine the regularization parameter to improve reconstruction performance. Conductivity norm is calculated at each iteration step and it used to obtain the regularization parameter which is a diagonal matrix in this case. The proposed method is applied to human thorax imaging and the reconstruction performance is compared with traditional methods. From numerical results, improved performance of proposed method is seen as compared to conventional methods.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.132-141
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• 2014

In an ordinary CT scan, a large number of projections with full field-of-view (FFOV) are necessary to reconstruct high resolution images. However, excessive x-ray dosage is a great concern in FFOV scan. Region-of-interest (ROI) CT or sparse-view CT is considered to be a solution to reduce x-ray dosage in CT scanning, but it suffers from bright-band artifacts or streak artifacts giving contrast anomaly in the reconstructed image. In this study, we propose an image reconstruction method to eliminate the bright-band artifacts and the streak artifacts simultaneously. In addition to the ROI scan for the interior projection data with relatively high sampling rate in the view direction, we get sparse-view exterior projection data with much lower sampling rate. Then, we reconstruct images by solving a constrained total variation (TV) minimization problem for the interior projection data, which is assisted by the exterior projection data in the compressed sensing (CS) framework. For the interior image reconstruction assisted by the exterior projection data, we implemented the proposed method which enforces dual data fidelity terms and a TV term. The proposed method has effectively suppressed the bright-band artifacts around the ROI boundary and the streak artifacts in the ROI image. We expect the proposed method can be used for low-dose CT scans based on limited x-ray exposure to a small ROI in the human body.