Rigid motion artifact reduction in CT using frequency domain analysis.

BACKGROUND: It is often unrealistic to assume that the subject remains stationary during a computed tomography (CT) imaging scan. A patient rigid motion can be decomposed into a translation and a rotation around an origin. How to minimize the motion impact on image quality is important.

OBJECTIVE: To eliminate artifacts caused by patient rigid motion during a CT scan, this study investigated a new method based on frequency domain analysis to estimate and compensate motion impact.

METHODS: Motion parameters was first determined by the magnitude correlation of projections in frequency domain. Then, the estimated parameters were applied to compensate for the motion effects in the reconstruction process. Finally, this method was extended to helical CT.

RESULTS: In fan-beam CT experiments, the simulation results showed that the proposed method was more accurate and faster on the performance of motion estimation than using Helgason-Ludwig consistency condition method (HLCC). Furthermore, the reconstructed images on both simulated and human head experiments indicated that the proposed method yielded superior results in artifact reduction.

CONCLUSIONS: The proposed method is a new tool for patient motion compensation, with a potential for practical application. It is not only applicable to motion correction in fan-beam CT imaging, but also to helical CT.