Recently, Tomosynthesis (TS) has been evaluated as a useful diagnostic imaging examination for the breast, the lung and orthopedics. However the size of the reconstructed region is limited by the mechanical acquisition motion of the X-ray tube and image detector so it is not possible to generate long view images for the spinal columns or the lower limbs examinations. Long-View Tomosynthesis (LVTS) method uses a different acquisition motion and post processing algorithm but results in a similar high resolution image slice free of anatomy above and below slice of interest. This method consists of three steps. First, acquire multi images while X-ray tube and Flat Panel Detector (FPD) are moving continuously in same linear direction. Then each image is divided into strips and strips from different images having similar X-ray beam trajectory are stitched together. Then multi slice coronal images are reconstructed from the long stitched images using filtered backprojection technique (FBP) which is similar to reconstruction algorithms used with Computed Tomography (CT) and TS. As a result, LVTS has 1.6 cycle/mm spatial resolution and 432[mm] × 800[mm] image size at a maximum. We conclude that LVTS improves depiction of long view tomograms, which can not be acquired by TS. Like TS, LVTS can produce images for weight bearing or partial weight bearing anatomy that is not possible with CT since LVTS has been integrated onto a tilting table.

Date Published: 13 March 2009
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 7258, Medical Imaging 2009: Physics of Medical Imaging, 72581K (13 March 2009); doi: 10.1117/12.810007

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7258:
Medical Imaging 2009: Physics of Medical Imaging
Ehsan Samei; Jiang Hsieh, Editor(s)