Introduction Multi-series CT (MSCT) scans, including non-contrast CT (NCCT), CT Perfusion (CTP), and CT Angiography (CTA), are widely used in acute stroke imaging. While each scan has its advantage in disease diagnosis, the varying image resolution of different series hinders the ability of the radiologist to discern subtle suspicious findings. Besides, higher image quality requires high radiation doses, leading to increases in health risks such as cataract formation and cancer induction. Thus, it is highly crucial to develop an approach to improve MSCT resolution and to lower radiation exposure. Hypothesis MSCT imaging of the same patient is highly correlated in structural features, the transferring and integration of the shared and complementary information from different series are beneficial for achieving high image quality. Methods We propose TL-GAN, a learning-based method by using Transfer Learning (TL) and Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) to reconstruct high-quality diagnostic images. Our TL-GAN method is evaluated on 4,382 images collected from nine patients’ MSCT scans, including 415 NCCT slices, 3,696 CTP slices, and 271 CTA slices. We randomly split the nine patients into a training set (4 patients), a validation set (2 patients), and a testing set (3 patients). In preprocessing, we remove the background and skullmore »
This content will become publicly available on May 25, 2023
PIMA-CT: Physical Model-Aware Cyclic Simulation and Denoising for Ultra-Low-Dose CT Restoration
A body of studies has proposed to obtain high-quality images from low-dose and noisy Computed Tomography (CT) scans for radiation reduction. However, these studies are designed for population-level data without considering the variation in CT devices and individuals, limiting the current approaches' performance, especially for ultra-low-dose CT imaging. Here, we proposed PIMA-CT, a physical anthropomorphic phantom model integrating an unsupervised learning framework, using a novel deep learning technique called Cyclic Simulation and Denoising (CSD), to address these limitations. We first acquired paired low-dose and standard-dose CT scans of the phantom and then developed two generative neural networks: noise simulator and denoiser. The simulator extracts real low-dose noise and tissue features from two separate image spaces (e.g., low-dose phantom model scans and standard-dose patient scans) into a unified feature space. Meanwhile, the denoiser provides feedback to the simulator on the quality of the generated noise. In this way, the simulator and denoiser cyclically interact to optimize network learning and ease the denoiser to simultaneously remove noise and restore tissue features. We thoroughly evaluate our method for removing both real low-dose noise and Gaussian simulated low-dose noise. The results show that CSD outperforms one of the state-of-the-art denoising algorithms without using any more »
- Award ID(s):
- 1908299
- Publication Date:
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10358253
- Journal Name:
- Frontiers in Radiology
- Volume:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 2673-8740
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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