Noise power spectrum studies of CT systems with off-centered image object and bowtie filter

In previous studies of the noise power spectrum (NPS) of multi-detector CT (MDCT) systems, the image object was usually placed at the iso-center of the CT system; therefore, the bowtie filter had negligible impact on the shape of the two-dimensional (2D) NPS of MDCT. This work characterized the NPS of off-centered objects when a bowtie filter is present. It was found that the interplay between the bowtie filter and object position has significant impact on the rotational symmetry of the 2D NPS. Depending on the size of the bowtie filter, the degree of object off-centering, and the location of the region of interest (ROI) used for the NPS measurements, the symmetry of the 2D NPS can be classified as circular, dumbbell, and a peculiar cloverleaf symmetry. An anisotropic NPS corresponds to structured noise texture, which may directly influence the detection performance of certain low contrast detection tasks.

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