Internal noise in channelized Hotelling observer (CHO) study of detectability index-differential phase contrast CTvs.conventional CT

Abstract

The channelized Hotelling observer (CHO) model, wherein internal noise plays an important role to account for the psychophysiological uncertainty in human’s visual perception, has found extensive applications in the assessment of image quality in nuclear medicine, mammography and conventional CT. Recently, we extended its application to investigating the detectability index of differential phase contrast (DPC) CT–an emerging CT technology with the potential of increasing the capability in soft tissue differentiation. We found that the quantitative determination of internal noise in the CHO study of DPC-CT’s detectability index should differ from that in the conventional CT. It is believed that the root cause of such a difference lies in the distinct noise spectra between the DPC-CT and conventional CT. In this paper, we present the preliminary results and investigate the adequate strategies to quantitatively determine the internal noise of CHO model for its application in the assessment of image quality in DPC-CT and its comparison with that of the conventional CT.