Evaluation of a compact cone beam CT concept with high image fidelity for point-of-care brain imaging

Cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) has potential advantages for developing portable, cost-effective point-of-care CT systems for intracranial imaging, such as early stroke diagnosis, hemorrhage detection, and intraoperative navigation. However, large volume imaging with flat panel detector based CBCT significantly increases the scattered radiation fluence which reduces its image quality and utility. To address these issues, a compact CBCT concept with enhanced image quality was investigated for intracranial imaging. The new system features a novel antiscatter collimator and data correction method to address the challenges in imaging large volumes with CBCT. A benchtop CBCT prototype was constructed. Imaging studies with anthropomorphic phantoms showed that soft tissue visualization, Hounsfield Unit (HU) accuracy, contrast, and spatial resolution increased significantly with the proposed CBCT concept, and they were comparable to the values measured in the gold standard multidetector-row CT (MDCT) images. Contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) in CBCT images was within 12-31% of the CNR in MDCT images. These findings indicate that a compact CBCT system integrated with effective scatter suppression techniques may have increased utility in the context of brain imaging, and the proposed approach may enable the development of point-of-care CT systems for head imaging based on flat panel detector based CBCT technology.