Method for tracing organ motion and removing artifacts for computed tomography imaging systems

摘要

A method of tracking organ motion and removing motion artifacts in conventional computer tomography scans is disclosed. Sensor time series indicative of projection measurement data of the object are correlated using a software spatial overlap correlator method in order to obtain a sinogram indicative of organ motion. The software spatial overlap correlator method is based on the fact that the image sampling process of a computer tomography scanner is periodical, therefore, image samples taken at a time t and at a time t+T are taken from identical spatial locations. The sinogram is then processed using a retrospective gating method or a coherent sinogram synthesis method in order to correct the image data for motion effects. This method for motion correction is software based and, therefore, can be easily implemented in existing computer tomography systems without major hardware modification.