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Calibration of cone beam CT using relative attenuation ratio for quantitative assessment of bone density: a small animal study

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International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose   Cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) has the disadvantage of providing non-quantitative results for bone density determination. The aim of this study is to calibrate CBCT results by using an internal reference (such as muscle) for quantitatively assessing bone density.

Methods We developed a new method using the relative attenuation ratio between two nearby materials (such as bone and muscle) for systemic error correction in CBCT that depends on the relative object position in the image volume. Phantom calibration was performed to calculate the acquired attenuation ratio in Hounsfield units (HU), comparable to the results from clinical multislice spiral computed tomography (MSCT). In addition, a small animal study with an osteoporotic rat model was evaluated to show the feasibility of this presented method to quantitatively assess bone density using a CBCT system.

Results The phantom study results showed that the calibration process successfully corrected the systemic inaccuracy from CBCT, and the calibrated HU values agreed with the values measured from MSCT. In the small animal study, the quantitative bone densities assessed from the calibrated CBCT results were consistent with the results from MSCT data.

Conclusion A practical method to quantitatively estimate attenuation (HU) values for bone tissues from CBCT scans that are comparable to MSCT scans is proposed. The method may improve the quantification ability of CBCT scanning without any additional hardware requirements.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by a grant of the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG SFB-TR79). The authors would like to thank Karin Leotta for excellent technical assistance during phantom and animal experiments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medical Physics in Radiology, German Cancer Research Center, Im Neuenheimer Feld 280, 69120 , Heidelberg, Germany

    Yifei Liu, Tobias Bäuerle, Wolfhard Semmler & Liji Cao

  2. Clinical Cooperation Unit Nuclear Medicine, German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany

    Leyun Pan, Antonia Dimitrakopoulou-Strauss & Ludwig G. Strauss

  3. Department of Trauma Surgery, Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany

    Christian Heiss & Reinhard Schnettler

  4. Laboratory of Experimental Trauma Surgery, Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen, Germany

    Christian Heiss & Reinhard Schnettler

Authors
  1. Yifei Liu
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  2. Tobias Bäuerle
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  3. Leyun Pan
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  4. Antonia Dimitrakopoulou-Strauss
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  5. Ludwig G. Strauss
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  6. Christian Heiss
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  7. Reinhard Schnettler
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  8. Wolfhard Semmler
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  9. Liji Cao
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Correspondence to Liji Cao.

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Liu, Y., Bäuerle, T., Pan, L. et al. Calibration of cone beam CT using relative attenuation ratio for quantitative assessment of bone density: a small animal study. Int J CARS 8, 733–739 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-012-0803-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-012-0803-5

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