X-ray digital intra-oral tomosynthesis for quasi-three-dimensional imaging: system, reconstruction algorithm, and experiments

Abstract

At present, there are mainly three x-ray imaging modalities for dental clinical diagnosis: radiography, panorama and computed tomo- graphy (CT). We develop a new x-ray digital intra-oral tomosynthesis (IDT) system for quasi-three-dimensional dental imaging which can be seen as an intermediate modality between traditional radiography and CT. In addition to normal x-ray tube and digital sensor used in intra- oral radiography, IDT has a specially designed mechanical device to complete the tomosynthesis data acquisition. During the scanning, the measurement geometry is such that the sensor is stationary inside the patient's mouth and the x-ray tube moves along an arc trajectory with respect to the intra-oral sensor. Therefore, the projection geometry can be obtained without any other reference objects, which makes it be easily accepted in clinical applications. We also present a compressed sensing- based iterative reconstruction algorithm for this kind of intra-oral tomo- synthesis. Finally, simulation and experiment were both carried out to evaluate this intra-oral imaging modality and algorithm. The results show that IDT has its potentiality to become a new tool for dental clinical diagnosis. © 2013 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). (DOI: 10