Keywords:
material decomposition, gold nanoparticles, contrast agents, scanning voltage, joint bilateral filtraion
Dual-energy micro- Computed Tomography provides high resolution for non-invasive images at low cost. It can determine the concentrations of constituent materials in a mixture. Taking advantage of K-edge, gold-based agents contribute to improve the contrast of some physiological tissues with low natural contrast. Because the K-edge of gold (80.7 kVp) is excessively high, the anatomical structures could not be identified clearly in in vivo small animal experiments. In this study, the voltage combination below K-edge is optimized to differentiate cortical bone, soft tissue and gold. To further improve the accuracy, the reconstructed dual-energy images are filtered using a joint bilateral filtration. Based on the quantitative analysis of material decomposition, the optimized voltage pair are 45kVp and 65kVp. Our results could provide practical guidance for the design of in vivo small animal experiments using gold nanoparticles as contrast agents.
- Yuan Yuan
- University of Massachusetts Lowell
- Yanbo Zhang
- University of Massachusetts Lowell
- Hengyong Yu
- University of Massachusetts Lowell
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