Program Information

Generalized Relative Object Detectability (G-ROD): A Metric for Comparing X-Ray Imaging Detector Systems

V Singh*, A Jain , D Bednarek , S Rudin , Toshiba Stroke and Vascular Research Center, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York

Presentations

SU-E-I-29 Sunday 3:00PM - 6:00PM Room: Exhibit Hall

Purpose:
To determine the relative task-specific performance of two x-ray imaging detectors including the effect of other components of the imaging chain.

Methods:
The relative object detectability (ROD) was defined as the ratio of the integral of the detective-quantum efficiency (DQE) of a detector weighted by the square of the Fourier Transform (or frequency spectrum) of the object to the same integral for a second detector. The generalized ROD (G-ROD) is calculated by replacing DQE by the generalized DQE (GDQE) which includes geometric unsharpness and scatter to evaluate the total imaging chain. The G-ROD was calculated for the micro-angiographic fluoroscope (MAF) relative to a flat-panel detector (FPD) for low (1.05) and high (1.2) magnifications with two focal-spot sizes, small (0.3 mm) and medium (0.5 mm), and for the same value of scatter fraction. Solid spheres from 50 to 600 microns were simulated as the objects for this evaluation. The G-ROD results were compared with those of the ROD which considers the detectors alone.

Results:
For 50-micron spheres, the ROD is 7.93 and, for the small [medium] focus, the G-ROD is 6.74 [5.22] at low magnification and 3.03 [1.66] at high magnification, indicating superior performance of the MAF particularly at low magnification. Both ROD and G-ROD decrease monotonically with size and remain around one above 400-microns. The G-ROD decreases more dramatically with low compared to high magnification for both focal spots.

Conclusion:
In all cases, the MAF performs better than the FPD and the decreasing trend of the G-ROD indicates that the performance of both detectors becomes similar as the object size increases and becomes nearly equal above 400-micron diameter sphere size. Finally, increased magnification and focal-spot size decrease the G-ROD, indicting that they degrade the performance of the MAF more than that of the FPD for a small-object viewing task.

Funding Support, Disclosures, and Conflict of Interest: Supported by NIH Grant: 2R01EB002873 and an equipment grant from Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation

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