방사선의학 웹진

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Abstract

PURPOSE: 

This study aims to propose a physics-based method of reducing beam-hardening artifacts induced by high-attenuation materials such as metal stents or other metallic implants.

METHODS: 

The proposed approach consists of deriving a sinogram inconsistency formula representing the energy dependence of the attenuation coefficient of high-attenuation materials. This inconsistency formula more accurately represents the inconsistencies of the sinogram than that of a previously reported formula (called the MAC-BC method). This is achieved by considering the properties of the high-attenuation materials, which include the materials' shapes and locations and their effects on the incident X-ray spectrum, including their attenuation coefficients.

RESULTS: 

Numerical simulation and phantom experiment demonstrate that the modeling error of MAC-BC method are nearly completely removed by means of the proposed method.

CONCLUSION: 

The proposed method reduces beam-hardening artifacts arising from high-attenuation materials by relaxing the assumptions of the MAC-BC method. In doing so, it outperforms the original MAC-BC method. Further research is required to address other potential sources of metal artifacts, such as photon starvation, scattering, and noise.​ 

Author information

Lee SM1, Seo JK1, Chung YE2, Baek J3, Park HS4.

1Department of Computational Science and Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul, 03722, Korea.2Department of Radiology, Yonsei University College of Medicine, 03722, Korea.3School of Integrated Technology and Yonsei Institute of Convergence Technology, Yonsei University, Incheon, 406-840, Korea.4National Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Daejeon, 34047, Korea.