Metal artifact reduction in cone beam computed tomography using forward projected reconstruction information.

In this work we present a new method to reduce artifacts, produced by high-density objects, especially metal implants, in X-ray cone beam computed tomography (CBCT). These artifacts influence clinical diagnostics and treatments using CT data, if metal objects are located in the field of view (FOV). Our novel method reduces metal artifacts by virtually replacing the metal objects with tissue objects of the same shape. First, the considered objects must be segmented in the original 2D projection data as well as in a reconstructed 3D volume. The attenuation coefficients of the segmented voxels are replaced with adequate attenuation coefficients of tissue (or water), then the required parts of the volume are projected onto the segmented 2D pixels, to replace the original information. This corrected 2D data can then be reconstructed with reduced artifacts, i. e. all metal objects virtually vanished. After the reconstruction, the segmented 3D metal objects were re-inserted into the corrected 3D volume. Our method was developed for mobile C-arm CBCTs; as it is necessary that they are of low weight, the C-arm results in unpredictable distortion. This misalignment between the original 2D data and the forward projection of the reconstructed 3D volume must be adjusted before the correction of the segmented 2D pixels. We applied this technique to clinical data and will now present the results.