Iterative image reconstruction in spectral-CT

Scan time of spectral-CTs is much longer than conventional CTs due to limited number of x-ray photons detectable by photon-counting detectors. However, the spectral pixel information in spectral-CT has much richer information on physiological and pathological status of the tissues than the CT-number in conventional CT, which makes the spectral-CT one of the promising future imaging modalities. One simple way to reduce the scan time in spectral-CT imaging is to reduce the number of views in the acquisition of projection data. But, this may result in poorer SNR and strong streak artifacts which can severely compromise the image quality. In this work, spectral-CT projection data were obtained from a lab-built spectral-CT consisting of a single CdTe photon counting detector, a micro-focus x-ray tube and scan mechanics. For the image reconstruction, we used two iterative image reconstruction methods, the simultaneous iterative reconstruction technique (SIRT) and the total variation minimization based on conjugate gradient method (CG-TV), along with the filtered back-projection (FBP) to compare the image quality. From the imaging of the iodine containing phantoms, we have observed that SIRT and CG-TV are superior to the FBP method in terms of SNR and streak artifacts.