Three-dimensional reconstruction from limited biplane angiographic projections: A phantom study

A method for 3D cone beam reconstruction of cerebral vasculature (both morphology and grayscale) from a limited number (< 10) of digital subtraction angiographic (DSA) projections obtained with a standard biplane C-arm x-ray system is described. The reconstruction method includes geometric calibration of the source and detector orientation, spatial image distortion correction, and Algebraic Reconstruction Technique (ART) with non-negativity constraint. Accuracy of voxel gray scale values estimated by ART is enhanced by determination of weights based on the intersection volume between a pyramidal ray and cubic voxel. The reconstruction is accelerated by retaining only the vessel containing voxels and distributed computing. Reconstruction of a phantom containing fiducial markers at known 3D locations demonstrated that the reconstructed geometry is accurate to less than a pixel width. Reconstruction is also obtained from an anatomic skull phantom with an embedded cerebral vasculature reproduction that includes an aneurysm. Three dimensional reconstruction exhibited the necessary details, both structural and grayscale.