CT Cardiac Image Blending to Reduce Banding Artifacts
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Multi-slice CT electrocardiogram-gated cardiac reconstruction techniques often produce gray scale non-uniformities, or banding artifacts, in reformatted images due to discontinuous sampling in time, which affects the quality of CT cardiac images.
Innovation Solution
A computer-based method that blends scan data from multiple cardiac cycles to construct a final image, using techniques such as view weighting, rebinning, filtering, and adaptive blending with pixel-specific weighting factors to reduce gray scale non-uniformities.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If data from multiple cardiac cycles are combined to improve image quality, then image quality improves, but gray scale non-uniformities (banding artifacts) are introduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies parameter changes by modifying the weighting factors used in combining data from different cardiac cycles. Specifically, it uses view-dependent weighting factors and z-dependent weighting factors that adjust the contribution of each cardiac cycle's data based on the specific view angle and z-position, thereby optimizing the combination to reduce banding artifacts while maintaining image quality
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements local quality by applying different weighting strategies to different regions of the image space. It uses view-dependent weighting for different angular views and z-dependent weighting for different longitudinal positions, allowing each region to be optimally weighted according to its specific characteristics rather than applying a uniform weighting across the entire image
2Object-affected harmful factors
If continuous sampling is used to avoid banding artifacts, then gray scale uniformity improves, but temporal resolution deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent changes the temporal sampling parameters by selectively combining data from discrete cardiac cycles rather than using continuous sampling. By optimizing the weighting factors for each cardiac cycle's data, it achieves gray scale uniformity while maintaining the temporal resolution benefits of gated acquisition
Data Source
AI summary
Methods and systems for generating computed tomographic (CT) images from image data acquired during different biological cycles are provided. A computer is programmed to receive a plurality of scan data acquired during a gated acquisition window of each of a plurality of biological cycles, blend the scan data acquired during a first of the plurality of biological cycles with the scan data acquired during a second of the plurality of biological cycles, and construct a final image from the blended data.