| 1. |
- Bornefalk, Hans, et al.
(författare)
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Effect of Temperature Variation on the Energy Response of a Photon Counting Silicon CT Detector
- 2013
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Ingår i: IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science. - : Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). - 0018-9499 .- 1558-1578. ; 60:2, s. 1442-1449
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The effect of temperature variation on pulse height determination accuracy is determined for a photon counting multibin silicon detector developed for spectral CT. Theoretical predictions of the temperature coefficient of the gain and offset are similar to values derived from synchrotron radiation measurements in a temperature controlled environment. By means of statistical modeling, we conclude that temperature changes affect all channels equally and with separate effects on gain and threshold offset. The combined effect of a 1 degrees C temperature increase is to decrease the detected energy by 0.1 keV for events depositing 30 keV. For the electronic noise, no statistically significant temperature effect was discernible in the data set, although theory predicts a weak dependence. The method is applicable to all x-ray detectors operating in pulse mode.
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| 2. |
- Liu, Xuejin, et al.
(författare)
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A Silicon-Strip Detector for Photon-Counting Spectral CT : Energy Resolution From 40 keV to 120 keV
- 2014
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Ingår i: IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science. - 0018-9499 .- 1558-1578. ; 61:3, s. 1099-1105
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We are developing a segmented silicon-strip detector for spectral computed tomography. The detector operates in photon-counting mode and allows pulse-height discrimination with 8 adjustable energy bins. In this work, we determine the energy resolution of a detector module using monoenergetic x-rays from 40 keV to 120 keV, provided at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Grenoble. For each incident x-ray energy, pulse height spectra at different input photon fluxes are obtained. We investigate changes of the energy resolution due to charge sharing between pixels and pulse pileup. The different incident energies are used to channel-wise calibrate the pulse-height response in terms of signal gain and offset and to probe the homogeneity of the detector module. The detector shows a linear pulse-height response in the energy range from 40 keV to 120 keV. The gain variation among the channels is below 4%, whereas the variation of the offsets is on the order of 1 keV. We find an absolute energy resolution (sigma(E)) that degrades from 1.5 keV to 1.9 keV with increasing x-ray energy from 40 keV to 100 keV. With increasing input count rate, sigma(E) degrades by approximately 4 . 10(-3) keV Mcps(-1) mm(2), which is, within error bars, the same for the different energies. The effect of charge sharing on the width of the response peak is found to be negligible.
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| 3. |
- Liu, Xuejin, et al.
(författare)
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Characterization of a silicon strip detector for photon-counting spectral CT using monoenergetic photons from 40 keV to 120 keV
- 2014
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Ingår i: Medical Imaging 2014. - : SPIE - International Society for Optical Engineering. - 9780819498267 ; , s. 90333O-
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: We are developing a segmented silicon strip detector that operates in photon-counting mode and allows pulse-height discrimination with 8 adjustable energy bins. In this work, we determine the energy resolution of the detector using monoenergetic x-ray radiation from 40 keV to 120 keV. We further investigate the effects of pulse pileup and charge sharing between detector channels that may lead to a decreased energy resolution. Methods: For each incident monochromatic x-ray energy, we obtain count spectra at different photon fluxes. These spectra corresponds to the pulse-height response of the detector and allow the determination of energy resolution and charge-sharing probability. The energy resolution, however, is influenced by signal pileup and charge sharing. Both effects are quantified using Monte Carlo simulations of the detector that aim to reproduce the conditions during the measurements. Results: The absolute energy resolution is found to increase from 1.7 to 2.1 keV for increasing energies 40 keV to 120 keV at the lowest measured photon flux. The effect of charge sharing is found to increase the absolute energy resolution by a factor of 1.025 at maximum. This increase is considered as negligibly small. The pileup of pulses leads to a deterioration rate of the energy resolution of 4 · 10-3 keV Mcps-1 mm2, corresponding to an increase of 0.04keV per 10 Mcps increase of the detected count rate.
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| 4. |
- Liu, Xuejin, et al.
(författare)
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Energy Calibration of a Silicon-Strip Detector for Photon-Counting Spectral CT by Direct Usage of the X-ray Tube Spectrum
- 2015
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Ingår i: IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science. - 0018-9499 .- 1558-1578. ; 62:1, s. 68-75
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The variation among energy thresholds in a multibin detector for photon-counting spectral CT can lead to ring artefacts in the reconstructed images. Calibration of the energy thresholds can be used to achieve homogeneous threshold settings or to develop compensation methods to reduce the artefacts. We have developed an energy-calibrationmethod for the different comparator thresholds employed in a photon-counting silicon-strip detector. In our case, this corresponds to specifying the linear relation between the threshold positions in units of mV and the actual deposited photon energies in units of keV. This relation is determined by gain and offset values that differ for different detector channels due to variations in the manufacturing process. Typically, the calibration is accomplished by correlating the peak positions of obtained pulse-height spectra to known photon energies, e. g. with the aid of mono-energetic x rays from synchrotron radiation, radioactive isotopes or fluorescence materials. Instead of mono-energetic x rays, the calibrationmethod presented in this papermakes use of a broad x-ray spectrum provided by commercial x-ray tubes. Gain and offset as the calibration parameters are obtained by a regression analysis that adjusts a simulated spectrum of deposited energies to ameasured pulse-height spectrum. Besides the basic photon interactions such as Rayleigh scattering, Compton scattering and photo-electric absorption, the simulation takes into account the effect of pulse pileup, charge sharing and the electronic noise of the detector channels. We verify the method for different detector channels with the aid of a table-top setup, where we find the uncertainty of the keV-value of a calibrated threshold to be between 0.1 and 0.2 keV.
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| 5. |
- Liu, Xuejin, et al.
(författare)
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Modelling the channel-wise count response of a photon-counting spectral CT detector to a broad x-ray spectrum
- 2015
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Ingår i: Medical Imaging 2015: Physics of Medical Imaging. - : SPIE. - 9781628415025
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Variations among detector channels in CT very sensitively lead to ring artefacts in the reconstructed images. For material decomposition in the projection domain, the variations can result in intolerable biases in the material line integral estimates. A typical way to overcome these effects is to apply calibration methods that try to unify spectral responses from different detector channels to an ideal response from a detector model. However, the calibration procedure can be rather complex and require excessive calibration measurements for a multitude of combinations of x-ray shapes, tissue combinations and thicknesses. In this paper, we propose a channel-wise model for a multibin photon-counting detector for spectral CT. Predictions of this channel-wise model match well with their physical performances, which can thus be used to eliminate ring artefacts in CT images and achieve projection-basis material decomposition. In an experimental validation, image data show significant improvement with respect to ring artefacts compared to images calibrated with flat-fielding data. Projection-based material decomposition gives basis material images showing good separation among individual materials and good quantification of iodine and gadolinium contrast agents. The work indicates that the channel-wise model can be used for quantitative CT with this detector.
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| 6. |
- Liu, Xuejin, et al.
(författare)
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Spectral response model for a multibin photon-counting spectral computed tomography detector and its applications
- 2015
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Ingår i: Journal of Medical Imaging. - : SPIE - International Society for Optical Engineering. - 2329-4302 .- 2329-4310. ; 2:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Variations among detector channels in computed tomography can lead to ring artifacts in the reconstructed images and biased estimates in projection-based material decomposition. Typically, the ring artifacts are corrected by compensation methods based on flat fielding, where transmission measurements are required for a number of material-thickness combinations. Phantoms used in these methods can be rather complex and require an extensive number of transmission measurements. Moreover, material decomposition needs knowledge of the individual response of each detector channel to account for the detector inhomogeneities. For this purpose, we have developed a spectral response model that binwise predicts the response of a multibin photon-counting detector individually for each detector channel. The spectral response model is performed in two steps. The first step employs a forward model to predict the expected numbers of photon counts, taking into account parameters such as the incident x-ray spectrum, absorption efficiency, and energy response of the detector. The second step utilizes a limited number of transmission measurements with a set of flat slabs of two absorber materials to fine-tune the model predictions, resulting in a good correspondence with the physical measurements. To verify the response model, we apply the model in two cases. First, the model is used in combination with a compensation method which requires an extensive number of transmission measurements to determine the necessary parameters. Our spectral response model successfully replaces these measurements by simulations, saving a significant amount of measurement time. Second, the spectral response model is used as the basis of the maximum likelihood approach for projection-based material decomposition. The reconstructed basis images show a good separation between the calcium-like material and the contrast agents, iodine and gadolinium. The contrast agent concentrations are reconstructed with more than 94% accuracy.
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| 7. |
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| 8. |
- Persson, Mats, et al.
(författare)
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Energy-resolved CT imaging with a photon-counting silicon-strip detector
- 2014
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Ingår i: Medical Imaging 2014. - : SPIE - International Society for Optical Engineering. - 9780819498267 ; , s. 90333L-
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Photon-counting detectors are promising candidates for use in the next generation of x-ray CT scanners. Among the foreseen benefits are higher spatial resolution, better trade-off between noise and dose, and energy discriminating capabilities. Silicon is an attractive detector material because of its low cost, mature manufacturing process and high hole mobility. However, it is sometimes claimed to be unsuitable for use in computed tomography because of its low absorption efficiency and high fraction of Compton scatter. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate that high-quality energy-resolved CT images can nonetheless be acquired with clinically realistic exposure parameters using a photon-counting silicon-strip detector with eight energy thresholds developed in our group. We use a single detector module, consisting of a linear array of 50 0.5 × 0.4 mm detector elements, to image a phantom in a table-top lab setup. The phantom consists of a plastic cylinder with circular inserts containing water, fat and aqueous solutions of calcium, iodine and gadolinium, in different concentrations. We use basis material decomposition to obtain water, calcium, iodine and gadolinium basis images and demonstrate that these basis images can be used to separate the different materials in the inserts. We also show results showing that the detector has potential for quantitative measurements of substance concentrations.
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| 9. |
- Persson, Mats, et al.
(författare)
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Energy-resolved CT imaging with a photon-counting silicon-strip detector
- 2014
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Ingår i: Physics in Medicine and Biology. - : IOP Publishing. - 0031-9155 .- 1361-6560. ; 59:22, s. 6709-6727
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Photon-counting detectors are promising candidates for use in the next generation of x-ray computed tomography (CT) scanners. Among the foreseen benefits are higher spatial resolution, better trade-off between noise and dose and energy discriminating capabilities. Silicon is an attractive detector material because of its low cost, mature manufacturing process and high hole mobility. However, it is sometimes overlooked for CT applications because of its low absorption efficiency and high fraction of Compton scatter. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate that silicon is a feasible material for CT detectors by showing energy-resolved CT images acquired with an 80 kVp x-ray tube spectrum using a photon-counting silicon-strip detector with eight energy thresholds developed in our group. We use a single detector module, consisting of a linear array of 50 0.5 x 0.4 mm detector elements, to image a phantom in a table-top lab setup. The phantom consists of a plastic cylinder with circular inserts containing water, fat and aqueous solutions of calcium, iodine and gadolinium, in different concentrations. By using basis material decomposition we obtain water, calcium, iodine and gadolinium basis images and demonstrate that these basis images can be used to separate the different materials in the inserts. We also show results showing that the detector has potential for quantitative measurements of substance concentrations.
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| 10. |
- Persson, Mats, 1987-, et al.
(författare)
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Subpixel x-ray imaging with an energy-resolving detector
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of Medical Imaging. - : SPIE - International Society for Optical Engineering. - 2329-4302 .- 2329-4310. ; 5:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The detector pixel size can be a severe limitation in x-ray imaging of fine details in the human body. We demonstrate a method of using spectral x-ray measurements to image the spatial distribution of the linear attenuation coefficient on a length scale smaller than one pixel, based on the fact that interfaces parallel to the x-ray beam have a unique spectral response, which distinguishes them from homogeneous materials. We evaluate the method in a simulation study by simulating projection imaging of the border of an iodine insert with 200 mg/ml I in a soft tissue phantom. The results show that the projected iodine profile can be recovered with an RMS resolution of 5% to 34% of the pixel size, using an ideal energy-resolving detector. We also validate this method in an experimental study by imaging an iodine insert in a polyethylene phantom using a photon-counting silicon-strip detector. The results show that abrupt and gradual transitions can be distinguished based on the transmitted x-ray spectrum, in good agreement with simulations. The demonstrated method may potentially be used for improving visualization of blood vessel boundaries, e.g., in acute stroke care.
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