A theoretical approach for the reduction of X-ray radiation dose within the optimization of the tomographic scanning process

Ali Ozdiev ,Sergey Lazarev

doi:10.1088/1742-6596/1327/1/012002

Abstract

X-ray tomography is one of the widespread methods of medical diagnostics. Modern medical tomographic setups have many advantages among them high resolution, high level of reproducibility, the simplicity of utilization, and many others. However, one of the most significant challenges of this method is a reducing of the radiation dose. We propose here an alternative scanning approach and an optimized filtered backprojection algorithm as a tool for the dose reduction by lower illumination area during the scan. Further, we demonstrate the power of this approach for dental application, where tomographic visualization is used as the main diagnostics instrument, employing a 3D model of a skull with teeth. From the results of our reconstruction, different defects in the teeth are successfully detected with an acceptable resolution. We hope that the proposed approach will be used as a fundamental idea to low the radiation dose in medical computer topology.

Highlights

Since the material-penetrating X-rays were discovered by Roentgen in 1895 many technological breakthroughs based on this phenomenon were made [1,2,3,4]
The commonly used in computed tomography (CT) general filtered backprojection algorithm (FBA) [9] requires the center of the investigated object to be on the optical axis of the setup [10]
We evaluated the decrease of the radiation dose for the 3D model of the skull with the teeth

Summary

Introduction

Since the material-penetrating X-rays were discovered by Roentgen in 1895 many technological breakthroughs based on this phenomenon were made [1,2,3,4]. Industrial non-destructive control, and medical diagnostics moved to a radically new level due to opportunities provided by X-ray imaging [5]. Medical diagnostics in contrast to other applications of X-ray imaging have much more limitations in terms of clinical utilization [7]. One of the most critical challenges is the reduction of the radiation dose received by a patient during the imaging procedure. Patients with a complex disease such as cancer must regularly go through the diagnostic procedure in purpose to control the current state of the tumor. In many cases, this inspection is impossible since the medical equipment does not fulfill requirements for radiation dose regarding utilization for periodical diagnostics procedures.

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