Scatter corrections for cone beam optical CT

Abstract

Cone beam optical computed tomography (OptCT) employing the VISTA scanner (Modus Medical, London, ON) has been shown to have significant promise for fast, three dimensional imaging of polymer gel dosimeters. One distinct challenge with this approach arises from the combination of the cone beam geometry, a diffuse light source, and the scattering polymer gel media, which all contribute scatter signal that perturbs the accuracy of the scanner. Beam stop array (BSA), beam pass array (BPA) and anti-scatter polarizer correction methodologies have been employed to remove scatter signal from OptCT data. These approaches are investigated through the use of well-characterized phantom scattering solutions and irradiated polymer gel dosimeters. BSA corrected scatter solutions show good agreement in attenuation coefficient with the optically absorbing dye solutions, with considerable reduction of scatter-induced cupping artifact at high scattering concentrations. The application of BSA scatter corrections to a polymer gel dosimeter lead to an overall improvement in the number of pixel satisfying the (3%, 3mm) gamma value criteria from 7.8% to 0.15%.