Purpose: Numerical 4D phantoms are a valuable tool for simulations and developments in 4D radiotherapy and image guidance. We present an upgrade of the 4DCT(MRI) lung phantoms, integrating realistic respiratory ribcage motion and further enhancing the lung density representation throughout the breathing cycle.
Methods: Synthetic 4DCTs, referred to as 4DCT(MRI)s, are based on density...
The planar formulation of the noise equivalent quanta (NEQ) and detective quantum efficiency (DQE) used to assess the image quality of projection images does not deal with the influence of temporal resolution on signal blurring and image noise. These metrics require correction factors based on temporal resolution when used for dynamic imaging systems such as fluoroscopy. Additionally, the...
Purpose
A splenic artery aneurysm during pregnancy poses a possibly life-threatening risk to the patient and is challenging to treat. One treatment option is fluoroscopy-guided embolization, which is however often met with apprehensiveness by the medical team due to potential prenatal radiation exposure. Therefore, knowledge of the expected uterus dose and effective radiation protection...
Purpose: To assess the image quality and dose performance of the first SPCCT for extremity imaging, and to demonstrate its clinical benefit for the diagnosis and management of crystal arthropathies.
Methods: The MARS Extremity 5x120 is a small-bore point-of-care SPCCT scanner designed for conducting clinical investigations on the upper extremities. We carried out the first full clinical...
Purpose
Early detection is essential for optimal survival of patients diagnosed with melanoma. To counteract the bottleneck of shortage of specialists and to enable at-risk patients to receive a faster consultation, an AI decision support tool is proposed. This will enable more efficient consultation, patients’ risk assessment, and overall better treatment outcomes for...
Purpose:
Regular quality control (QC) testing of radiological images has been overlooked throughout the world, although it has been shown to reduce patient radiation exposure and improve image quality [1]. The aim of this project is to test the framework for QC of mammographic imaging systems proposed by IAEA Human Health Series n. 39 and to characterize the response from different...
Purpose
Intensity units in magnetic resonance (MR) images have no inherent meaning. Quantitative evaluation of MR images may benefit from an intensity normalization. There exists no consensus about the best intensity normalization method, and most approaches do not consider physiological meaning of image regions or are restricted to specific body regions.
We developed a novel approach...
Deep learning (DL)-based methods have been proposed to substitute CT-based PET attenuation and scatter correction to achieve CT-free PET imaging. A critical bottleneck for these DL-based methods is their limited capability in the application in the heterogeneous domain of PET imaging, i.e. a variety of scanners and tracers. This study employs a simple way to integrate domain knowledge in deep...
Purpose
The aim of this study is to compare deep learning (DL) approaches trained on co-registered image pairs (paired data) and unpaired data requiring only images from each modality. The generation of synthetic CT (sCT) images from magnetic resonance (MR) images acquired with a TrueFISP sequence at a 0.35T hybrid MR-Linac is investigated along with their application for quality assurance...
Purpose:
Imaging plays a more and more important role in radiation oncology (RO) treatments with technological advances and increased complexity of treatment techniques (hypofractionation, IGRT, SRT etc.). This study aimed to compare our RO head scan protocols with those present in our radiology (RA) department based on their radiation exposure and image quality.
Methods:
The...
