3D Image Reconstruction with Minimum Radiation Exposure and its Applications to Interventional Radiology (Project Summary)

Interventional radiology (IR) is a subspecialty of radiology in which minimally invasive procedures are performed under image guidance for either diagnostic or therapeutic purposes. Examples of interventional radiology procedures include angiogram, angioplasty, radiofrequency ablation, and so on.

The key to a successful IR procedure is high quality image guidance. Common interventional imaging modalities include X-ray fluoroscopy, computed tomography (CT), ultrasound (US), and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Amongst these, the most widely used is X-ray fluoroscopy and CT because they are fast, geometrically accurate, and cost effective.

The key disadvantage of these two modalities is that they both use X-rays, which is a type of ionizing radiation that is harmful to the patient. Thus the key challenge of improving modern interventional radiology is how to perform high-quality image reconstruction while minimizing the amount of radiation exposure to patient. This project is designed to answer this challenge and has three specific aims:

(1) To develop non-convex compressive sensing algorithm for real time high-quality image reconstruction using as few projections as possible, and thus lowering patients exposure to radiation.

(2) To investigate the potential of 3D volumetric image reconstruction using non-coplanar projections from an IR C-arm fluoroscopy unit. To our best knowledge, so far, no attempt has been made to perform image reconstruction using non-coplanar projections.

(3) To verify the developed algorithm/software in the context of radiofrequency ablation therapy, which is a modality in interventional radiology.

Contact: Shuang (Sean) Luan @ sluan@cs.unm.edu