Noise reduction in photon-counting CT using frequency-dependent optimal weighting

Abstract

Spectral computed tomography (CT) allows optimizing image quality by combining the data in several energy channels with optimal weighting factors. In an improvement of this technique, the weighting factors are made dependent on spatial frequency, and previous work has shown that this can improve detectability for a simple detector model. In this work, we investigate the achievable detectability improvement from frequency-dependentweighting for realistic models of photon-counting detectors. We use a Monte-Carlo based simulation model to obtain point-spread functions and autocovariances for two detector models with 0.5 × 0.5 mm2 pixels, one CdTe-based with five energy bins and one silicon-based with eight energy bins. We generated noise-only images for two different energy weighting schemes: one where optimal weights were selected individually for each spatial frequency, and one where the weights optimal for zero frequency were applied to all frequencies. The modulation transfer function was set equal in both schemes. Results show that frequency-based weighting can decrease noise variance by 11 % for Si and by 38 % for CdTe, for an edge-enhancing MTF, demonstrating that optimal frequency-dependent weighting has the capability of reducing noise in high-resolution CT images.