Image-quality characteristics in the longitudinal direction from different image-reconstruction algorithms during single-rotation volume acquisition on head computed tomography: A phantom study

Abstract

Background A multi detector computed tomography (CT) scanner with wide-area coverage enables whole-brain volumetric scanning in a single rotation. Purpose To investigate variations in image-quality characteristics in the longitudinal direction for different image-reconstruction algorithms and strengths with phantoms. Material and methods Single-rotation volume scans were performed on a 320-row multidetector CT volume scanner using three types of phantoms. Tube current was set to 200 mA (standard dose) and 50 mA (low dose). All images were reconstructed with filtered back projection (FBP), mild and strong levels with hybrid iterative reconstruction (HIR), and model-based IR (MBIR). Computed tomography numbers, image noise, noise power spectrum (NPS), task-based transfer function (TTF), and visual spatial resolution were used to evaluate uniformity of image quality in the longitudinal direction ( Z-axis). Results The MBIR images showed smaller variation in CT numbers in the Z-axis. The difference in the highest and lowest CT numbers was smaller (5.0 Hounsfield units [HU]) for MBIR than for FBP (6.6 HU) and HIR (6.8 HU). The variations in image noise were the smallest for strong MBIR and the largest for FBP. The low-frequency component at NPS0.2 was lower for strong MBIR than for other algorithms. The high-frequency component at NPS0.8 was low in all reconstructions. For MBIR, the image resolution and TTFs were higher in the outer portion than in the center. Conclusion Model-based IR is the optimal image-reconstruction algorithm for single-volume scan of spherical subjects owing to its high in-plane resolution and uniformity of CT numbers, image noise, and NPS in the Z-axis.