Journal
MEDICAL PHYSICS
Volume 35, Issue 3, Pages 917-926Publisher
AMER ASSOC PHYSICISTS MEDICINE AMER INST PHYSICS
DOI: 10.1118/1.2837286
Keywords
4DCT; internal motion indices; motion estimation; image registration
Funding
- NCI NIH HHS [P01 CA059827-06A1, P01 CA59827-06A1, P01 CA059827] Funding Source: Medline
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Current four-dimensional (4D) computed tomography (CT) imaging techniques using multislice CT scanners require retrospective sorting of the reconstructed two-dimensional (2D) CT images. Most existing sorting methods depend on externally monitored breathing signals recorded by extra instruments. External signals may not always accurately capture the breathing status and may lead to severe discontinuity artifacts in the sorted CT volumes. This article describes a method to find the temporal correspondences for the free-breathing multislice CT images acquired at different table positions based on internal anatomy movement. The algorithm iteratively sorts the CT images using estimated internal motion indices. It starts from two imperfect reference volumes obtained from the unsorted CT images; then, in each iteration, thorax motion is estimated from the reference volumes and the free-breathing CT images. Based on the estimated motion, the breathing indices as well as the reference volumes are refined and fed into the next iteration. The algorithm terminates when two successive iterations attain the same sorted reference volumes. In three out of five patient studies, our method attained comparable image quality with that using external breathing signals. For the other two patient studies, where the external signals poorly reflected the internal motion, the proposed method significantly improved the sorted 4D CT volumes, albeit with greater computation time. (c) 2008 American Association of Physicists in Medicine.
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