In-Vivo Cone Beam CT System Based On The Rotatable Gantry

Since the 1870 s, the first commercial launch of CT, CT technology has been developing at high speed because of its great contribution to make in terms of human health and the enormous economic benefits in the field of industrial non-destructive testing. After CT scanners have gone through five generations, CT examination is playing an important role currently in clinical examination departments of hospitals, research departments of universities, NDT departments of factories. CT technology is widely used, in the past 10 years, and the ratio of papers relevant to CT and tomosynthesis published in Medical Physics did not decrease but increase, indicating that as the researchers understanding of CT technology, CT technology also brings them more and more unknowns. And the development of flat plane array detectors, cone-beam CT becomes a hot topic in the field of CT. Cone-beam CT system is a typical three-dimensional imaging system with many advantages of high spatial resolution, high utilization of radiation, reconstruction rapidly, simple and so on; On the other hand, small animal experiments is an important means in the field of biology and medical research. This article will discuss how to design and develop a rotatable gantry-based in vivo cone beam CT system to help researchers effectively carry out animal experiments.In this article, in-vivo cone beam CT system based on the rotatable gantry is designed and developed. And a low-cost solution that wireless transmission system stably implements data exchange between the server and the IPC rather than high-performance slip ring is carried out for continuous scanning. The weighting method that modifies the dc components in the Y direction of the Fourier domain is proposed to effectively suppress ring artifacts in tomography images. This article develops the scanning control software platform for processing data, image display and other functions. Data acquisition and processing subsystem, Data transmission subsystem, mechanical subsystem and motion control subsystem mutually play roles and orderly complete the complex and sophisticated works of CT scanning, correction, reconstruction and visualization under the control of the self-developed software platform, forming an organic whole. CT scanning is completed through "projection- collection- step" scan mode. All three-dimensional CT data sets are reconstructed with a minimum of 10 um isotropic resolution. Line pair spacing of 50 um can be clearly distinguished when testing the CT system built in this paper using QRM Micro-CT Bar Pattern Phantom with high spatial resolution. Imaging results of small animal in vivo show that the CT system achieves quantitative data and high-resolution three-dimensional images available for small animal studies. After integrated with digital PET system the CT system has become a powerful tool for animal models analysis.