Enhanced discrimination of calcified and soft arterial plaques using computed tomography with a multi-energy-window photon counting x-ray detector

Xiaolan Wang; Jingyan Xu; Katsuyuki Taguchi; Bradley E. Patt; Douglas J. Wagenaar; Eric C Frey

doi:10.1117/12.813877

13 March 2009 Enhanced discrimination of calcified and soft arterial plaques using computed tomography with a multi-energy-window photon counting x-ray detector

Xiaolan Wang, Jingyan Xu, Katsuyuki Taguchi, Bradley E. Patt, Douglas J. Wagenaar, Eric C Frey

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 7258, Medical Imaging 2009: Physics of Medical Imaging; 72583W (2009) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.813877
Event: SPIE Medical Imaging, 2009, Lake Buena Vista (Orlando Area), Florida, United States

Abstract

This work aims at discriminating between soft and calcified coronary artery plaques using microCT with a multi-energywindow photon counting X-ray detector (PCXD). We have previously investigated a solid state X-ray detector which has the capability to count individual photons in different energy windows. The data from these energy windows may be treated as multiple simultaneous X-ray acquisitions within non-overlapping energy windows that can provide additional information about tissue differences. In this work, we simulated a photon counting detector with five energy windows. We investigated two approaches for using the energy information provided by this detector. First, we applied energy weighting to the reconstruction from different energy windows to improve the signal-to-noise ratio between calcified and soft plaques. This resulted in a significant improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio. Second, we applied the basis material decomposition method to discriminate coronary artery plaques based on their calcium content. The results were compared with those obtained using dual-kVp material decomposition. We observed significantly improved contrast-tonoise ratios for the PCXD-based approaches.

Citation Download Citation

Xiaolan Wang, Jingyan Xu, Katsuyuki Taguchi, Bradley E. Patt, Douglas J. Wagenaar, and Eric C Frey "Enhanced discrimination of calcified and soft arterial plaques using computed tomography with a multi-energy-window photon counting x-ray detector", Proc. SPIE 7258, Medical Imaging 2009: Physics of Medical Imaging, 72583W (13 March 2009); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.813877

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