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Add Tube Current Modulation to a Low Dose Simulation Tool for CT Systems

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Y Ding

Y. Ding1,2*, G. Wen1,3 , K. Brown1 , P. Klahr1 , A. Dhanantwari1 1. Philips Healthcare, Highland Heights, OH; 2. Department of Physics, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ; 3. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX.

Presentations

TU-EF-204-7 (Tuesday, July 14, 2015) 1:45 PM - 3:45 PM Room: 204


Purpose: We extended the capabilities of a low dose simulation tool to model Tube-Current Modulation (TCM). TCM is widely used in clinical practice to reduce radiation dose in CT scans. We expect the tool to be valuable for various clinical applications (e.g., optimize protocols, compare reconstruction techniques and evaluate TCM methods).

Methods: The tube current is input as a function of z location, instead of a fixed value. Starting from the line integrals of a scan, a new Poisson noise realization at a lower dose is generated for each view. To validate the new functionality, we compared simulated scans with real scans in image space.

Results: First we assessed noise in the difference between the low-dose simulations and the original high-dose scan. When the simulated tube current is a step function of z location, the noise at each segment matches the noise of 3 separate constant-tube-current-simulations. Secondly, with a phantom that forces TCM, we compared a low-dose simulation with an equivalent real low-dose scan. The mean CT number of the simulated scan and the real low-dose scan were 137.7±0.6 and 137.8±0.5 respectively. Furthermore, with 240 ROIs, the noise of the simulated scan and the real low-dose scan were 24.03±0.45 and 23.99±0.43 respectively, and they were not statistically different (2-sample t-test, p-value=0.28). The facts that the noise reflected the trend of the TCM curve, and that the absolute noise measurements were not statistically different validated the TCM function.

Conclusion: We successfully added tube-current modulation functionality in an existing low dose simulation tool. We demonstrated that the noise reflected an input tube-current modulation curve. In addition, we verified that the noise and mean CT number of our simulation agreed with a real low dose scan.


Funding Support, Disclosures, and Conflict of Interest: The authors are all employees of Philips. Yijun Ding is also supported by NIBIB P41EB002035 and NIBIB R01EB000803.


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