Multiple Adversarial Learning Based Angiography Reconstruction for Ultra-Low-Dose Contrast Medium CT

Iodinated contrast medium (ICM) dose reduction is beneficial for decreasing potential health risk to renal-insufficiency patients in CT scanning. Due to the low-intensity vessel in ultra-low-dose-ICM CT angiography, it cannot provide clinical diagnosis of vascular diseases. Angiography reconstruction for ultra-low-dose-ICM CT can enhance vascular intensity for directly vascular diseases diagnosis. However, the angiography reconstruction is challenging since patient individual differences and vascular disease diversity. In this paper, we propose a Multiple Adversarial Learning based Angiography Reconstruction (i.e., MALAR) framework to enhance vascular intensity. Specifically, a bilateral learning mechanism is developed for mapping a relationship between source and target domains rather than the image-to-image mapping. Then, a dual correlation constraint is introduced to characterize both distribution uniformity from across-domain features and sample inconsistency within domain simultaneously. Finally, an adaptive fusion module by combining multi-scale information and long-range interactive dependency is explored to alleviate the interference of high-noise metal. Experiments are performed on CT sequences with different ICM doses. Quantitative results based on multiple metrics demonstrate the effectiveness of our MALAR on angiography reconstruction. Qualitative assessments by radiographers confirm the potential of our MALAR for the clinical diagnosis of vascular diseases.

Automated summary

In this paper, a multiple adversarial learning based angiography reconstruction framework is proposed to enhance vascular intensity. A bilateral learning mechanism is developed to establish a relationship between source and target domains. A dual correlation constraint is introduced to characterize distribution uniformity from across-domain features and sample inconsistency within domain simultaneously. An adaptive fusion module is explored to alleviate the interference of high-noise metal. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework for angiography reconstruction.