Projection-based improvement of 3D reconstructions from motion-impaired dental cone beam CT data.
PURPOSE
Computed tomography (CT) and, in particular, cone beam CT (CBCT) have been increasingly used as a diagnostic tool in recent years. Patient motion during acquisition is common in CBCT due to long scan times. This results in degraded image quality and may potentially increase the number of retakes. Our aim was to develop a marker-free iterative motion correction algorithm that works on the projection images and is suitable for local tomography.


METHODS
We present an iterative motion correction algorithm that allows the patient's motion to be detected and taken into account during reconstruction. The core of our method is a fast GPU-accelerated three-dimensional reconstruction algorithm. Assuming rigid motion, motion correction is performed by minimizing a pixel-wise cost function between all captured x-ray images and parameterized projections of the reconstructed volume.


RESULTS
Our method is marker-free and requires only projection images. Furthermore, it can deal with local tomography data. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on both simulated and real motion-beset patient images. The results show that our new motion correction algorithm leads to accurate reconstructions with sharper edges, better contrasts and more detail.


CONCLUSIONS
The presented method allows for correction of patient motion with observable improvements in image quality compared to uncorrected reconstructions. Potentially, this may reduce the number of retakes caused by corrupted reconstructions due to patient movements.
['Niebler|Stefan|S|', 'Schömer|Elmar|E|', 'Tjaden|Henning|H|', 'Schwanecke|Ulrich|U|', 'Schulze|Ralf|R|']
D054893:Cone-Beam Computed Tomography D003813:Dentistry D006801:Humans D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional D009068:Movement
tomography CBCT motion