Intensity Field Decomposition for Tissue-Guided Neural Tomography

TL;DR

This paper introduces tissue-guided neural tomography (TNT), a novel method for sparse-view CBCT reconstruction that leverages tissue intensity differences to improve image quality with fewer projections.

Contribution

The paper proposes a new neural field decomposition approach using tissue regularization and a quadruple network architecture for enhanced sparse-view CBCT reconstruction.

Findings

Significantly improves image quality with fewer projections.

Achieves faster convergence than existing neural rendering methods.

Maintains comparable reconstruction quality with state-of-the-art techniques.

Abstract

Cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) typically requires hundreds of X-ray projections, which raises concerns about radiation exposure. While sparse-view reconstruction reduces the exposure by using fewer projections, it struggles to achieve satisfactory image quality. To address this challenge, this article introduces a novel sparse-view CBCT reconstruction method, which empowers the neural field with human tissue regularization. Our approach, termed tissue-guided neural tomography (TNT), is motivated by the distinct intensity differences between bone and soft tissue in CBCT. Intuitively, separating these components may aid the learning process of the neural field. More precisely, TNT comprises a heterogeneous quadruple network and the corresponding training strategy. The network represents the intensity field as a combination of soft and hard tissue components, along with their respective textures. We train the network with guidance from estimated tissue projections, enabling efficient learning of the desired patterns for the network heads. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed method significantly improves the sparse-view CBCT reconstruction with a limited number of projections ranging from 10 to 60. Our method achieves comparable reconstruction quality with fewer projections and faster convergence compared to state-of-the-art neural rendering based methods.