Imaging phantom

About: Imaging phantom is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 28170 publications have been published within this topic receiving 510003 citations. The topic is also known as: phantom.

Simultaneous Reconstruction of Activity and Attenuation in Time-of-Flight PET

Abstract: In positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission tomography (SPECT), attenuation correction is necessary for quantitative reconstruction of the tracer distribution. Previously, several attempts have been made to estimate the attenuation coefficients from emission data only. These attempts had limited success, because the problem does not have a unique solution, and severe and persistent “cross-talk” between the estimated activity and attenuation distributions was observed. In this paper, we show that the availability of time-of-flight (TOF) information eliminates the cross-talk problem by destroying symmetries in the associated Fisher information matrix. We propose a maximum-a-posteriori reconstruction algorithm for jointly estimating the attenuation and activity distributions from TOF PET data. The performance of the algorithm is studied with 2-D simulations, and further illustrated with phantom experiments and with a patient scan. The estimated attenuation image is robust to noise, and does not suffer from the cross-talk that was observed in non-TOF PET. However, some constraining is still mandatory, because the TOF data determine the attenuation sinogram only up to a constant offset.

The dependence of EM energy absorption upon human head modeling at 900 MHz

Abstract: The dependence of electromagnetic energy absorption at 900 MHz in the human head on its anatomy and its modeling are investigated for RF-sources operating in the very close proximity of the head. Different numerical head phantoms based on MRI scans of 3 different adults were used with voxel sizes down to 1 mm/sup 3/. Simulations of the absorption were performed by distinguishing the electrical properties of up to 13 tissue types. In addition simulations with modified electric parameters and reduced degrees of complexity were performed. Thus, the phantoms greatly differ from each other in terms of shape, size, and internal anatomy. The numerical results are compared with those of measurements in a multitissue phantom and 2 homogeneous phantoms of different shapes and sizes. The results demonstrate that size and shape are of minor importance, Although local SAR values depend significantly on local inhomogeneities and electric properties, the volume-averaged spatial peak SAR obtained with the homogeneous phantoms only slightly overestimates that of the worst-case exposure in the inhomogeneous phantoms.

Nonlinear Diffusion in Laplacian Pyramid Domain for Ultrasonic Speckle Reduction

Abstract: A new speckle reduction method, i.e., Laplacian pyramid-based nonlinear diffusion (LPND), is proposed for medical ultrasound imaging. With this method, speckle is removed by nonlinear diffusion filtering of bandpass ultrasound images in Laplacian pyramid domain. For nonlinear diffusion in each pyramid layer, a gradient threshold is automatically determined by a variation of median absolute deviation (MAD) estimator. The performance of the proposed LPND method has been compared with that of other speckle reduction methods, including the recently proposed speckle reducing anisotropic diffusion (SRAD) and nonlinear coherent diffusion (NCD). In simulation and phantom studies, an average gain of 1.55 dB and 1.34 dB in contrast-to-noise ratio was obtained compared to SRAD and NCD, respectively. The visual comparison of despeckled in vivo ultrasound images from liver and carotid artery shows that the proposed LPND method could effectively preserve edges and detailed structures while thoroughly suppressing speckle. These preliminary results indicate that the proposed speckle reduction method could improve image quality and the visibility of small structures and fine details in medical ultrasound imaging

Accurate Model-Based Reconstruction Algorithm for Three-Dimensional Optoacoustic Tomography

Abstract: In many practical optoacoustic imaging implementations, dimensionality of the tomographic problem is commonly reduced into two dimensions or 1-D scanning geometries in order to simplify technical implementation, improve imaging speed or increase signal-to-noise ratio. However, this usually comes at a cost of significantly reduced quality of the tomographic data, out-of-plane image artifacts, and overall loss of image contrast and spatial resolution. Quantitative optoacoustic image reconstruction implies therefore collection of point 3-D (volumetric) data from as many locations around the object as possible. Here, we propose and validate an accurate model-based inversion algorithm for 3-D optoacoustic image reconstruction. Superior performance versus commonly-used backprojection inversion algorithms is showcased by numerical simulations and phantom experiments.

Thermoacoustic computed tomography using a conventional linear transducer array.

Abstract: We report on methodology for employing a conventional linear transducer array as a thermoacoustic detector in a thermoacoustic computed tomography (TCT) device, which has been designed for imaging small animals, e.g., athymic nude mice. We tested this concept using a 5 MHz, 128-element linear array (Acuson model L538). Thermoacoustic emissions were induced in a tissue-mimicking phantom using a Nd:YAg laser, operated at 1064 nm. Two-dimensional, axial "slice" images were formed using a filtered-backprojection algorithm. In-plane spatial resolution was measured as better than 200 microns with a slice thickness of 1.5 mm (full width at half maximum). The same detector, when operated as a conventional phased array, produced conventional ultrasound images in perfect registration with the TCT images.