Reduced-Dose Imageless Needle and Patient Tracking in Interventional CT Procedures

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Interventional Radiology
• Image-Guided Therapy

Background:

• Accurate needle and patient tracking is crucial for interventional CT procedures.
• Current methods often require full CT image reconstruction, increasing radiation dose.
• Real-time feedback for needle placement is essential for precision and safety.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an imageless tracking method for needles and patients in interventional CT.
• To enable accurate localization without full CT image reconstruction.
• To facilitate X-ray dose reduction through fractional scanning.

Main Methods:

• Utilizes fractional CT scanning with sparse view sampling.
• Detects metallic needles and spherical markers in projection (sinogram) space.
• Transforms projection data to physical space for needle and patient localization.

Main Results:

• Achieved voxel-size needle tip localization error in phantom studies.
• Demonstrated comparable accuracy to 3-D image-space methods.
• Enabled X-ray dose reduction via fractional scanning for frequent localizations.

Conclusions:

• The proposed imageless method accurately tracks needles and patients during interventional CT.
• Fractional scanning allows for dose reduction or increased localization frequency.
• This technique enhances safety and efficiency in image-guided procedures.