Human and model observer performance for lesion detection in breast cone beam CT images with the FDK reconstruction

PLoS One. 2018 Mar 15;13(3):e0194408. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0194408. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

We investigate the detectability of breast cone beam computed tomography images using human and model observers and the variations of exponent, β, of the inverse power-law spectrum for various reconstruction filters and interpolation methods in the Feldkamp-Davis-Kress (FDK) reconstruction. Using computer simulation, a breast volume with a 50% volume glandular fraction and a 2mm diameter lesion are generated and projection data are acquired. In the FDK reconstruction, projection data are apodized using one of three reconstruction filters; Hanning, Shepp-Logan, or Ram-Lak, and back-projection is performed with and without Fourier interpolation. We conduct signal-known-exactly and background-known-statistically detection tasks. Detectability is evaluated by human observers and their performance is compared with anthropomorphic model observers (a non-prewhitening observer with eye filter (NPWE) and a channelized Hotelling observer with either Gabor channels or dense difference-of-Gaussian channels). Our results show that the NPWE observer with a peak frequency of 7cyc/degree attains the best correlation with human observers for the various reconstruction filters and interpolation methods. We also discover that breast images with smaller β do not yield higher detectability in the presence of quantum noise.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Breast / diagnostic imaging*
  • Breast / pathology
  • Computer Simulation
  • Cone-Beam Computed Tomography / methods*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Observer Variation
  • Phantoms, Imaging*
  • Radiographic Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Reproducibility of Results

Grants and funding

This work was supported by Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (IITP-2017-2017-0-01015); National Research Foundation of Korea (2017M2A2A4A01070302, 2015R1C1A1A01052268, 2017M2A2A6A01019663). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.