Chi Ma, Baiyu Chen, Chi Wan Koo, Shuai Leng, Lifeng Yu, Edwin A. Takahashi, Joel G. Fletcher, David L. Levin, Ronald S. Kuzo, Lyndsay D. Viers, Stephanie A. Vincent-Sheldon, Cynthia H. McCollough
Task-based assessment of computed tomography (CT) image quality requires a large number of cases with ground truth. Prospective case acquisition can be time-consuming. Inserting lesions into existing cases to simulate positive cases is a promising alternative. The aim was to evaluate a recently developed projection-based lesion insertion technique in thoracic CT. In total, 32 lung nodules of various attenuations were segmented from 21 patient cases, forward projected, inserted into projections, and reconstructed. Two experienced radiologists and two residents independently evaluated these nodules in two substudies. First, the 32 inserted and the 32 original nodules were presented in a randomized order and each received a score from 1 to 10 (1 = absolutely artificial to 10 = absolutely realistic). Second, the inserted and the corresponding original lesions were presented side-by-side to each reader. For the randomized evaluation, discrimination of real versus inserted nodules was poor with areas under the receiver operative characteristic curves being 0.57 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.46 to 0.68], 0.69 (95% CI: 0.58 to 0.78), and 0.62 (95% CI: 0.54 to 0.69) for the two residents, two radiologists, and all four readers, respectively. Our projection-based lung nodule insertion technique provides a robust method to artificially generate positive cases that prove to be difficult to differentiate from real cases.
Channelized Hotelling observer (CHO) models have been shown to correlate well with human observers for several phantom-based detection/classification tasks in clinical computed tomography (CT). A large number of repeated scans were used to achieve an accurate estimate of the model’s template. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the experimental and CHO model parameters affect the minimum required number of repeated scans. A phantom containing 21 low-contrast objects was scanned on a 128-slice CT scanner at three dose levels. Each scan was repeated 100 times. For each experimental configuration, the low-contrast detectability, quantified as the area under receiver operating characteristic curve, Az, was calculated using a previously validated CHO with randomly selected subsets of scans, ranging from 10 to 100. Using Az from the 100 scans as the reference, the accuracy from a smaller number of scans was determined. Our results demonstrated that the minimum number of repeated scans increased when the radiation dose level decreased, object size and contrast level decreased, and the number of channels increased. As a general trend, it increased as the low-contrast detectability decreased. This study provides a basis for the experimental design of task-based image quality assessment in clinical CT using CHO.
Task-based assessment of computed tomography (CT) image quality requires a large number of cases with ground truth. Inserting lesions into existing cases to simulate positive cases is a promising alternative approach. The aim of this study was to evaluate a recently-developed raw-data based lesion insertion technique in thoracic CT. Lung lesions were segmented from patient CT images, forward projected, and reinserted into the same patient CT projection data. In total, 32 nodules of various attenuations were segmented from 21 CT cases. Two experienced radiologists and 2 residents blinded to the process independently evaluated these inserted nodules in two sub-studies. First, the 32 inserted and the 32 original nodules were presented in a randomized order and each received a rating score from 1 to 10 (1=absolutely artificial to 10=absolutely realistic). Second, the inserted and the corresponding original lesions were presented side-by-side to each reader, who identified the inserted lesion and provided a confidence score (1=no confidence to 5=completely certain). For the randomized evaluation, discrimination of real versus artificial nodules was poor with areas under the receiver operative characteristic curves being 0.69 (95% CI: 0.58-0.78), 0.57 (95% CI: 0.46-0.68), and 0.62 (95% CI: 0.54-0.69) for the 2 radiologists, 2 residents, and all 4 readers, respectively. For the side-by-side evaluation, although all 4 readers correctly identified inserted lesions in 103/128 pairs, the confidence score was moderate (2.6). Our projection-domain based lung nodule insertion technique provides a robust method to artificially generate clinical cases that prove to be difficult to differentiate from real cases.
To perform task-based image quality assessment in CT, it is desirable to have a large number of realistic patient images with known diagnostic truth. One effective way to achieve this objective is to create hybrid images that combine patient images with simulated lesions. Because conventional hybrid images generated in the image-domain fails to reflect the impact of scan and reconstruction parameters on lesion appearance, this study explored a projection-domain approach. Liver lesion models were forward projected according to the geometry of a commercial CT scanner to acquire lesion projections. The lesion projections were then inserted into patient projections (decoded from commercial CT raw data with the assistance of the vendor) and reconstructed to acquire hybrid images. To validate the accuracy of the forward projection geometry, simulated images reconstructed from the forward projections of a digital ACR phantom were compared to physically acquired ACR phantom images. To validate the hybrid images, lesion models were inserted into patient images and visually assessed. Results showed that the simulated phantom images and the physically acquired phantom images had great similarity in terms of HU accuracy and high-contrast resolution. The lesions in the hybrid image had a realistic appearance and merged naturally into the liver background. In addition, the inserted lesion demonstrated reconstruction-parameter-dependent appearance. Compared to conventional image-domain approach, our method enables more realistic hybrid images for image quality assessment.
In previous investigations on CT image quality, channelized Hotelling observer (CHO) models have been shown to well represent human observer performance in several phantom-based detection/discrimination tasks. In these studies, a large number of independent images was necessary to estimate the expectation images and covariance matrices for each test condition. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the number of repeated scans affects the precision and accuracy of the CHO’s performance in a signal-known-exactly detection task. A phantom containing 21 low-contrast objects (3 contrast levels and 7 sizes) was scanned with a 128-slice CT scanner at three dose levels. For each dose level, 100 independent images were acquired for each test condition. All images were reconstructed using filtered-backprojection (FBP) and a commercial iterative reconstruction algorithm. For each combination of dose level and reconstruction method, the low-contrast detectability, quantified with the area under receiver operating characteristic curve (Az), was calculated using a previously validated CHO model. To determine the dependency of CHO performance on the number of repeated scans, the Az value was calculated for different number of channel filters, for each object size and contrast, and for different dose/reconstruction settings using all 100 repeated scans. The Az values were also calculated using randomly selected subsets of the scans (from 10 to 90 scans with an increment of 10 scans). Using the Az from the 100 scans as the reference, the accuracy of Az values calculated from a fewer number of scans was determined and the minimal number of scans was subsequently derived. For the studied signal-known-exactly detection task, results demonstrated that, the minimal number of scans depends on dose level, object size and contrast level, and channel filters.
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