SU‐E‐I‐37: Low‐Dose Real‐Time Region‐Of‐Interest X‐Ray Fluoroscopic Imaging with a GPU‐Accelerated Spatially Different Bilateral Filtering

Abstract

Purpose:The purpose of our study is to reduce imaging radiation dose while maintaining image quality of region of interest (ROI) in X‐ray fluoroscopy. A low‐dose real‐time ROI fluoroscopic imaging technique which includes graphics‐processing‐unit‐ (GPU‐) accelerated image processing for brightness compensation and noise filtering was developed in this study.Methods:In our ROI fluoroscopic imaging, a copper filter is placed in front of the X‐ray tube. The filter contains a round aperture to reduce radiation dose to outside of the aperture. To equalize the brightness difference between inner and outer ROI regions, brightness compensation was performed by use of a simple weighting method that applies selectively to the inner ROI, the outer ROI, and the boundary zone. A bilateral filtering was applied to the images to reduce relatively high noise in the outer ROI images. To speed up the calculation of our technique for real‐time application, the GPU‐acceleration was applied to the image processing algorithm. We performed a dosimetric measurement using an ion‐chamber dosimeter to evaluate the amount of radiation dose reduction. The reduction of calculation time compared to a CPU‐only computation was also measured, and the assessment of image quality in terms of image noise and spatial resolution was conducted.Results:More than 80% of dose was reduced by use of the ROI filter. The reduction rate depended on the thickness of the filter and the size of ROI aperture. The image noise outside the ROI was remarkably reduced by the bilateral filtering technique. The computation time for processing each frame image was reduced from 3.43 seconds with single CPU to 9.85 milliseconds with GPU‐acceleration.Conclusion:The proposed technique for X‐ray fluoroscopy can substantially reduce imaging radiation dose to the patient while maintaining image quality particularly in the ROI region in real‐time.