Experimental research of the energy bins for K-edge imaging using a photon counting detector: a phantom and mice study
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Experimental research of the energy bins for K‑edge imaging using a photon counting detector: a phantom and mice study Zhidu Zhang1,2 · Jinming Hu1,2 · Xiaomei Zhang1,2 · Qiong Xu1,3 · Mohan Li1,3 · Cunfeng Wei1,2,3 · Long Wei1,2,3 · Zhe Wang1,3 Received: 25 February 2020 / Revised: 11 May 2020 / Accepted: 10 June 2020 © Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences 2020
Abstract Purpose K-edge imaging based on the photon counting detectors (PCDs) is an effective enhanced imaging method because the PCDs are conducive to the K-edge imaging due to the adjustable energy thresholds. The energy bins significantly affect the image quality of the K-edge imaging, but the conventional energy bins used for K-edge imaging are continuous which weaken the K-edge signal and decline the image quality. Hence, how to get a better K-edge signal by the optimized energy bins is the key point for the K-edge imaging based on the PCDs. Method This paper experimentally studied the influence of the energy bins used for the K-edge imaging based on the PCDs. The conventional energy bins were determined by the theoretical-attenuation method (TAM), and the optimized energy bins were determined by the threshold-scan method (TSM). For the phantom and mice imaging, we performed both the K-edge subtraction algorithm and the K-edge decomposition algorithm on the projections obtained by the energy bins which were determined by the TAM and TSM. The image quality was compared using the CNR of the objective area. Results The experimental results showed that the energy bins identified by the TSM had a better performance than the TAM in both imaging methods. The TSM improved the CNR by ~ 39% than the TAM in the phantom results and could better highlight the areas where the contrast agents are enriched (such as the kidney). Conclusions The optimized energy bins can better highlight the K-edge signal than the conventional energy bins which can improve the image quality and have the potential to reduce the amount of the contrast agents. Keywords Experimental study · Energy bins · K-edge imaging · Photon counting detectors · Mice
Introduction K-edge imaging plays an important role in clinical examination. It uses the K-edge effect of the contrast agents to highlight the target area and solves the problem in distinguishing the target area and background tissues due to the small difference in attenuation [1–3]. * Zhe Wang [email protected] 1
Beijing Engineering Research Center of Radiographic Techniques and Equipment, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
2
School of Nuclear Science and Technology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
3
Jinan Laboratory of Applied Nuclear Science, Jinan 250131, China
Before the advent of PCD, the early K-edge imaging requires multiple exposures to obtain the information on both sides of the K-edge, which greatly increases the radiation dose and the motion artifacts [4, 5]. Also, due to the energy mi
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