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Accurate and automatic segmentation of three-dimensional (3D) individual teeth from cone-beam computerized tomography (CBCT) images is a challenging problem because of the difficulty in separating an individual tooth from adjacent teeth and its surrounding alveolar bone. Thus, this paper proposes a fully automated method of identifying and segmenting 3D individual teeth from dental CBCT images. The proposed method addresses the aforementioned difficulty by developing a deep learning-based hierarchical multi-step model. First, it automatically generates upper and lower jaws panoramic images to overcome the computational complexity caused by high-dimensional data and the curse of dimensionality associated with limited training dataset. The obtained 2D panoramic images are then used to identify 2D individual teeth and capture loose- and tight- regions of interest (ROIs) of 3D individual teeth. Finally, accurate 3D individual tooth segmentation is achieved using both loose and tight ROIs. Experimental results showed that the proposed method achieved an F1-score of 93.35 percent for tooth identification and a Dice similarity coefficient of 94.79 percent for individual 3D tooth segmentation. The results demonstrate that the proposed method provides an effective clinical and practical framework for digital dentistry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four-dimensional cone-beam computed tomography (4D CBCT) has been developed to provide a sequence of phase-resolved reconstructions in image-guided radiation therapy. However, 4D CBCT images are degraded by severe streaking artifacts and noise because the phase-resolved image is an extremely sparse-view CT procedure wherein a few under-sampled projections are used for the reconstruction of each phase. Aiming at improving the overall quality of 4D CBCT images, we proposed two CNN models, named N-Net and CycN-Net, respectively, by fully excavating the inherent property of 4D CBCT. To be specific, the proposed N-Net incorporates the prior image reconstructed from entire projection data based on U-Net to boost the image quality for each phase-resolved image. Based on N-Net, a temporal correlation among the phase-resolved images is also considered by the proposed CycN-Net. Extensive experiments on both XCAT simulation data and real patient 4D CBCT datasets were carried out to verify the feasibility of the proposed CNNs. Both networks can effectively suppress streaking artifacts and noise while restoring the distinct features simultaneously, compared with the existing CNN models and two state-of-the-art iterative algorithms. Moreover, the proposed method is robust in handling complicated tasks of various patient datasets and imaging devices, which implies its excellent generalization ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data truncation is a common problem in computed tomography (CT). Truncation causes cupping artifacts inside the field-of-view (FOV) and anatomical structures missing outside the FOV. Deep learning has achieved impressive results in CT reconstruction from limited data. However, its robustness is still a concern for clinical applications. Although the image quality of learning-based compensation schemes may be inadequate for clinical diagnosis, they can provide prior information for more accurate extrapolation than conventional heuristic extrapolation methods. With extrapolated projection, a conventional image reconstruction algorithm can be applied to obtain a final reconstruction. In this work, a general plug-and-play (PnP) method for truncation correction is proposed based on this idea, where various deep learning methods and conventional reconstruction algorithms can be plugged in. Such a PnP method integrates data consistency for measured data and learned prior image information for truncated data. This shows to have better robustness and interpretability than deep learning only. To demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed PnP method, two state-of-the-art deep learning methods, FBPConvNet and Pix2pixGAN, are investigated for truncation correction in cone-beam CT in noise-free and noisy cases. Their robustness is evaluated by showing false negative and false positive lesion cases. With our proposed PnP method, false lesion structures are corrected for both deep learning methods. For FBPConvNet, the root-mean-square error (RMSE) inside the FOV can be improved from 92HU to around 30HU by PnP in the noisy case. Pix2pixGAN solely achieves better image quality than FBPConvNet solely for truncation correction in general. PnP further improves the RMSE inside the FOV from 42HU to around 27HU for Pix2pixGAN. The efficacy of PnP is also demonstrated on real clinical head data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]