Preliminary evaluation of stationary inverse-geometry digital tomosynthesis system for diagnostic applications: a simulation study

Abstract Conventional X-ray imaging systems for diagnosis have several issues such as high radiation dose, structure superposition, and complicated geometry. These issues can be solved by providing 3D cross-sectional images with limited dose and simplifying system geometries. The purpose of this study is to implement a stationary inverse-geometry digital tomosynthesis (s-IGDT) system through simulation and evaluate the performance of the s-IGDT system for diagnostic applications. We also investigated the digital radiography (DR) and conventional digital tomosynthesis (DT) images for comparison. The simulated s-IGDT system was modeled with a linear X-ray source array contained 75 focal spots and a flat-panel detector. The linear X-ray source array and detector were stationary during image acquisition. In order to reduce truncation artifacts, a raw data correction process was performed. We measured profile, signal difference-to-noise ratio (SDNR), contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) and root-mean-square error (RMSE) for a comparison of image quality among the s-IGDT, DR and conventional DT. The results showed that the SDNR, CNR and quantitative accuracy of the s-IGDT were higher than those of the DR and similar with those of the conventional DT. Also, the spatial resolution of the s-IGDT evaluated by modulation transfer function (MTF) was comparable with the conventional DT. Therefore, the s-IGDT proposed in this study has a feasibility for diagnostic applications and a potential as an alternative to the conventional X-ray imaging system.