Motion artifact reduction in computed tomography

A computer-implemented method of imaging a region of patient anatomy that includes a target volume and one or more high-contrast portions, the method comprising:

• based on a set of two-dimensional (2D) acquired projections of the region of patient anatomy and location information indicating pixels that correspond to the one or more high-contrast portions, generating a set of 2D corrected projections of the region of patient anatomy, wherein each 2D corrected projection in the set of 2D corrected projections is generated by removing visual information from a corresponding 2D acquired projection in the set of 2D acquired projections, wherein the visual information is removed from the pixels that correspond to the one or more high-contrast portions;
• generating a first reconstructed volume of the region of patient anatomy based on the 2D corrected projections;
• generating a set of low-contrast 2D projections of the region of patient anatomy by performing a forward projection process on the first reconstructed volume;
• and
• generating a second reconstructed volume of the region of patient anatomy by:
• generating a set of low-artifact 2D projections of the region of patient anatomy by replacing first image information, in pixels of one or more of the 2D acquired projections that correspond to the high-contrast portion, with second image information from corresponding pixels in the low-contrast 2D projections;
• modifying the set of low-artifact 2D projections of the region of patient anatomy by including scaled pixels in one or more border regions of each of the one or more low-artifact 2D projections, wherein each border region borders at least one pixel that includes the second image information and wherein each scaled pixel includes scaled image information that is based on the second image information and on third image information from pixels in the low-contrast 2D projections;
• and
• executing a reconstruction algorithm using the set of modified low-artifact 2D projections of the region to generate the second reconstructed volume.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium including instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, configure the one or more processors to perform:

• based on a set of 2D acquired projections of a region of patient anatomy and location information indicating pixels that correspond to one or more high-contrast portions within the region of patient anatomy, generating a set of 2D corrected projections of the region of patient anatomy, wherein each 2D corrected projection in the set of 2D corrected projections is generated by removing visual information from a corresponding 2D acquired projection in the set of 2D acquired projections, wherein the visual information is removed from the pixels that correspond to the one or more high-contrast portions;
• generating a first reconstructed volume of the region of patient anatomy based on the 2D corrected projections;
• generating a set of low-contrast 2D projections of the region of patient anatomy by performing a forward projection process on the first reconstructed volume;
• and
• generating a second reconstructed volume of the region of patient anatomy by:
• generating a set of low-artifact 2D projections of the region of patient anatomy by replacing first image information, in pixels of one or more of the 2D acquired projections that correspond to the high-contrast portion, with second image information from corresponding pixels in the low-contrast 2D projections;
• modifying the set of low-artifact 2D projections of the region of patient anatomy by including scaled pixels in one or more border regions of each of the one or more low-artifact 2D projections, wherein each border region borders at least one pixel that includes the second image information and wherein each scaled pixel includes scaled image information that is based on the second image information and on third image information from pixels in the low-contrast 2D projections;
• executing a reconstruction algorithm using the set of modified low-artifact 2D projections of the region to generate the third reconstructed volume.