Motion artifacts reduction algorithm for two-exposure dual-energy radiography
AssigneeGE Medical Systems Global Technology Company, LLC
InventorsKadri N. Jabri, Gopal B. Avinash
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The present technique provides a variety of processing schemes for decomposing soft tissue and bone images more accurately from low and high-energy images acquired from an imaging system, such as a dual-energy digital radiography system using flat-panel technology. In particular, a pre-decomposition process is provided for spatially matching, or registering, low and high-energy images using warping registration prior to dual energy image decomposition, which creates the soft tissue and bone images. Accordingly, the pre-decomposition process reduces motion artifacts between the low and high-energy images, thereby improving image clarity of the decomposed soft tissue and bone images.
Claims56
A method of improving image clarity of soft tissue and bone images decomposable from first and second energy images acquired by a digital radiography imaging system at different times, comprising the act of registering the first energy image to the second energy image using warping registration prior to decomposing the first and second energy images into the soft tissue and bone images.
The method of claim l,comprising the act of decomposing the soft tissue and bone images from the first and second energy images after being registered.
A method of reducing motion artifacts for two exposure dual energy radiography prior to decomposition of soft tissue and bone images, comprising:
- obtaining first and second energy images from a digital radiography imaging system over a time interval;
- defining a maximum pixel range that any point in the first energy image is allowed to shift relative to the second energy image;
- defining a spatial matrix for analyzing the first energy image;
- decomposing a sub-image from the first and second energy images for each shift vector of a plurality of possible shift vectors for each spatial area of the spatial matrix;
- computing a total edge strength for each possible shift vector within the maximum pixel range for each spatial area of the spatial matrix;
- defining an area shift vector for each spatial area to be the shift vector that minimizes the total edge strength for the spatial area;
- computing a pixel shift vector for each pixel within the first energy image by interpolation based on adjacent area shift vectors;
- and
- registering the first energy image to the second energy image by warping the first energy image pixel-by-pixel using the pixel shift vectors.
A method of producing soft tissue and bone images of the desired anatomy of a patient, comprising the acts of:
- acquiring first and second images of the desired anatomy at different times using a digital radiography imaging system having flat-panel detector technology, wherein one image of the first and second images is acquired at a low-energy level and a remaining image of the first and second images is acquired at a high-energy level;
- registering the first image to the second image using warping registration;
- and
- decomposing soft tissue and bone images of the desired anatomy from the warpingly registered first and second images.
A computer program for processing image data acquired from a digital radiography imaging system, comprising:
- a tangible medium configured to support machine-readable code;
- and
- machine-readable code supported on the medium and comprising a pre-decomposition warping-image-registration routine adapted to register first and second images prior to decomposition into soft tissue and bone images, wherein the first and second images are obtained from the digital radiography imaging system at different energy levels and different times.
A medical imaging system, comprising:
- a digital radiographic imaging system, comprising:
- an x-ray device adapted to generate x-rays;
- a collimator adapted to filter the x-rays in a desired anatomical region of a patient;
- a flat-panel digital x-ray detector adapted to detect x-rays passing through the patient;
- and
- dual-energy control circuitry adapted to acquire first and second images of the desired anatomical region at different energy levels over a time interval;
- and
- an image processing system, comprising:
- a pre-decomposition processing module adapted to register the first image to the second image using warping registration prior to decomposition;
- and
- a dual-energy image decomposition module adapted to decompose soft tissue and bone images from the warpingly registered first and second images.
A system for decomposing soft tissue and bone images from first and second energy images acquired by a digital radiography imaging system, comprising:
- means for warpingly registering the first energy image to the second energy image prior to image decomposition;
- and
- means for decomposing the soft tissue and bone images from the first and second energy images.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.