Slice-wise reconstruction for low-dose cone-beam CT using a deep residual convolutional neural network  

作　　者：Hong-Kai Yang Kai-Chao Liang Ke-Jun Kang Yu-Xiang Xing 

机构地区：[1]Department of Engineering Physics, Tsinghua University [2]Key Laboratory of Particle and Radiation Imaging, Ministry of Education, Tsinghua University

出　　处：《Nuclear Science and Techniques》2019年第4期53-61,共9页核技术（英文）

基　　金：supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.61771279,11435007);the National Key Research and Development Program of China(No.2016YFF0101304)

摘　　要：Because of the growing concern over the radiation dose delivered to patients, X-ray cone-beam CT(CBCT) imaging of low dose is of great interest. It is difficult for traditional reconstruction methods such as Feldkamp to reduce noise and keep resolution at low doses. A typical method to solve this problem is using optimizationbased methods with careful modeling of physics and additional constraints. However, it is computationally expensive and very time-consuming to reach an optimal solution. Recently, some pioneering work applying deep neural networks had some success in characterizing and removing artifacts from a low-dose data set. In this study,we incorporate imaging physics for a cone-beam CT into a residual convolutional neural network and propose a new end-to-end deep learning-based method for slice-wise reconstruction. By transferring 3D projection to a 2D problem with a noise reduction property, we can not only obtain reconstructions of high image quality, but also lower the computational complexity. The proposed network is composed of three serially connected sub-networks: a cone-to-fan transformation sub-network, a 2D analytical inversion sub-network, and an image refinement sub-network. This provides a comprehensive solution for end-to-end reconstruction for CBCT. The advantages of our method are that the network can simplify a 3D reconstruction problem to a 2D slice-wise reconstruction problem and can complete reconstruction in an end-to-end manner with the system matrix integrated into the network design. Furthermore, reconstruction can be less computationally expensive and easily parallelizable compared with iterative reconstruction methods.Because of the growing concern over the radiation dose delivered to patients, X-ray cone-beam CT(CBCT) imaging of low dose is of great interest. It is difficult for traditional reconstruction methods such as Feldkamp to reduce noise and keep resolution at low doses. A typical method to solve this problem is using optimizationbased methods with careful modeling of physics and additional constraints. However, it is computationally expensive and very time-consuming to reach an optimal solution. Recently, some pioneering work applying deep neural networks had some success in characterizing and removing artifacts from a low-dose data set. In this study,we incorporate imaging physics for a cone-beam CT into a residual convolutional neural network and propose a new end-to-end deep learning-based method for slice-wise reconstruction. By transferring 3D projection to a 2D problem with a noise reduction property, we can not only obtain reconstructions of high image quality, but also lower the computational complexity. The proposed network is composed of three serially connected sub-networks: a cone-to-fan transformation sub-network, a 2D analytical inversion sub-network, and an image refinement sub-network. This provides a comprehensive solution for end-to-end reconstruction for CBCT. The advantages of our method are that the network can simplify a 3D reconstruction problem to a 2D slice-wise reconstruction problem and can complete reconstruction in an end-to-end manner with the system matrix integrated into the network design. Furthermore, reconstruction can be less computationally expensive and easily parallelizable compared with iterative reconstruction methods.

关 键 词：CONE-BEAM CT Slice-wise RESIDUAL U-net Low dose Image DENOISING 

分 类 号：TL[核科学技术]