Circular tomosynthesis implemented with a clinical interventional flat-panel based C-arm: Initial performance study

There exists a strong desire for a platform in which. researchers may investigate planar tomosyntliesis (i.e. all source positions reside in a single plane that is parallel to the reconstructed image planes) trajectories directly on an interventional C-arm system. In this work we describe an experimental system designed to accomplish this aim, as well as the potential of this system for testing multiple aspects of the tomosynthetic image acquisition process. The system enables one to evaluate the effect of the physical imaging parameters on the image quality, as well as the effect of the reconstruction algorithm utilized. The experimental data collection for this work is from the Innova 4100 (Flat-panel based interventional C-arm system manufactured by GE Healthcare). The system is calibrated using a phantom with known geometrical placement of multiple small metallic spheres. Initial performance was assessed with three physical phantoms and performance was assessed by varying: the reconstruction algorithm (backprojection, filtered backprojection), the half tomographic angle (15 degrees, 25 degrees, 35 degrees), and the angular sampling (20,40,80 views / acquisition). Initial results demonstrate the ability to well differentiate simulated vessels separated by 1 cm, even with the modest half tomographic angle of 15 degrees and modest sampling of 20 views/acquisition.