Implementation of iterative metal artifact reduction in the pre-planning-procedure of three-dimensional physical modeling

BACKGROUND: To assess the impact of metal artifact reduction techniques in 3D printing by evaluating image quality and segmentation time in both phantom and patient studies with dental restorations and/or other metal implants. An acrylic denture apparatus (Kilgore Typodent, Kilgore International, Coldwater, MI) was set in a 20 cm water phantom and scanned on a single-source CT scanner with gantry tilting capacity (SOMATOM Edge, Siemens Healthcare, Forchheim, Germany) under 5 scenerios: (1) Baseline acquisition at 120 kV with no gantry tilt, no jaw spacer, (2) acquisition at 140 kV, (3) acquisition with a gantry tilt at 15°, (4) acquisition with a non-radiopaque jaw spacer and (5) acquisition with a jaw spacer and a gantry tilt at 15°. All acquisitions were reconstructed both with and without a dedicated iterative metal artifact reduction algorithm (MAR). Patients referred for a head-and-neck exam were included into the study. Acquisitions were performed on the same scanner with 120 kV and the images were reconstructed with and without iterative MAR. Segmentation was performed on a dedicated workstation (Materialise Interactive Medical Image Control Systems; Materialise NV, Leuven, Belgium) to quantify volume of metal artifact and segmentation time. RESULTS: In the phantom study, the use of gantry tilt, jaw spacer and increased tube voltage showed no benefit in time or artifact volume reduction. However the jaw spacer allowed easier separation of the upper and lower jaw and a better display of the teeth. The use of dedicated iterative MAR significantly reduced the metal artifact volume and processing time. Same observations were made for the four patients included into the study. CONCLUSION: The use of dedicated iterative MAR and jaw spacer substantially reduced metal artifacts in the head-and-neck CT acquisitions, hence allowing a faster 3D segmentation workflow.