Region-of-interest reconstruction for a cone-beam dental CT with a circular trajectory

Dental CT is the most appropriate and accurate device for preoperative evaluation of dental implantation. It can demonstrate the quantity of bone in three dimensions (3D), the location of important adjacent anatomic structures and the quality of available bone with minimal geometric distortion. Nevertheless, with the rapid increase of dental CT examinations, we are facing the problem of dose reduction without loss of image quality. In this work, backprojection-filtration (BPF) and Feldkamp–Davis–Kress (FDK) algorithm was applied to reconstruct the 3D full image and region-of-interest (ROI) image from complete and truncated circular cone-beam data respectively by computer-simulation. In addition, the BPF algorithm was evaluated based on the 3D ROI-image reconstruction from real data, which was acquired from our developed circular cone-beam prototype dental CT system. The results demonstrated that the ROI-image quality reconstructed from truncated data using the BPF algorithm was comparable to that reconstructed from complete data. The FDK algorithm, however, created artifacts while reconstructing ROI-image. Thus it can be seen, for circular cone-beam dental CT, reducing scanning angular range of the BPF algorithm used for ROI-image reconstruction are helpful for reducing the radiation dose and scanning time. Finally, an analytical method was developed for estimation of the ROI projection area on the detector before CT scanning, which would help doctors to roughly estimate the total radiation dose before the CT examination.

► BPF algorithm was applied by using dental CT for the first time.
► A method was developed for estimation of projection region before CT scanning.
► Roughly predict the total radiation dose before CT scans.
► Potential reduce imaging radiation dose, scatter, and scanning time.