title: Optimal CT scanning plan for long-bone 3-D reconstruction.
abstract: Digital computed tomographic (CT) data are widely used in three-dimensional (3-D) reconstruction of bone geometry and density features for 3-D) modeling purposes. During in vivo CT data acquisition the number of scans must be limited in order to protect patients from the risks related to X-ray absorption. Aim of this work is to automatically define, given a finite number of CT slices, the scanning plan which returns the optimal 3-D) reconstruction of a bone segment from in vivo acquired CT images. An optimization algorithm based on a Discard-Insert-Exchange technique has been developed. In the proposed method the optimal scanning sequence is searched by minimizing the overall reconstruction error of a two-dimensional (2-D) prescanning image: an anterior-posterior (AP) X-ray projection of the bone segment. This approach has been validated in vitro on three different femurs. The 3-D reconstruction errors obtained through the optimization of the scanning plan on the 2-D) prescanning images and on the corresponding 3-D data sets have been compared. Two-dimensional and 3-D data sets have been reconstructed by linear interpolation along the longitudinal axis. Results show that direct 3-D optimization yields root mean square reconstruction errors which are only 4%-7% lower than the 2-D-optimized plan, thus proving that 2-D-optimization provides a good suboptimal scanning plan for 3-D reconstruction. Further on, 3-D reconstruction errors given by the optimized scanning plan and a standard radiological protocol for long bones have been compared. Results show that the optimized plan yields 20%-50% lower 3-D reconstruction errors.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zannoni
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cappello
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Viceconti
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001842:Bone and Bones / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D005269:Femur / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D006801:Humans; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000379:methods*