Evaluation of hybrid SART  +  OS  +  TV iterative reconstruction algorithm for optical-CT gel dosimeter imaging

Optical computed tomography (optical-CT) is a high-resolution, fast, and easily accessible readout modality for gel dosimeters. This paper evaluates a hybrid iterative image reconstruction algorithm for optical-CT gel dosimeter imaging, namely, the simultaneous algebraic reconstruction technique (SART) integrated with ordered subsets (OS) iteration and total variation (TV) minimization regularization. The mathematical theory and implementation workflow of the algorithm are detailed. Experiments on two different optical-CT scanners were performed for cross-platform validation. For algorithm evaluation, the iterative convergence is first shown, and peak-to-noise-ratio (PNR) and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) results are given with the cone-beam filtered backprojection (FDK) algorithm and the FDK results followed by median filtering (mFDK) as reference. The effect on spatial gradients and reconstruction artefacts is also investigated. The PNR curve illustrates that the results of SART  +  OS  +  TV finally converges to that of FDK but with less noise, which implies that the dose-OD calibration method for FDK is also applicable to the proposed algorithm. The CNR in selected regions-of-interest (ROIs) of SART  +  OS  +  TV results is almost double that of FDK and 50% higher than that of mFDK. The artefacts in SART  +  OS  +  TV results are still visible, but have been much suppressed with little spatial gradient loss. Based on the assessment, we can conclude that this hybrid SART  +  OS  +  TV algorithm outperforms both FDK and mFDK in denoising, preserving spatial dose gradients and reducing artefacts, and its effectiveness and efficiency are platform independent.