Adaptive portal CT reconstruction: A simulation study

Abstract

In radiotherapy, radiation treatment beams contain valuable information for patient setup verification. These beams may be used for portal CT reconstruction. However, direct use of the beam data for reconstruction may yield inadequate CT images simply because these beams cover only a part of the patient body. In this study, we use the treatment beams in addition to a set of regular CT projection beams to reconstruct a locally enhanced portal CT image. This approach is called adaptive portal CT reconstruction. A computer simulation demonstrated the advantages of the approach. The image reconstruction was carried out by the multilevel scheme algebraic reconstruction technique. Results indicated that the image quality of adaptive portal CT reconstruction is equivalent to that obtained from a full set of projections. This proposed technique should be not only valuable for three-dimensional radiotherapy verification, but also applicable to diagnostic CT imaging.