Spectral Photon-Counting CT Technology in Chest Imaging

The X-ray imaging field is currently undergoing a period of rapid technological innovation in diagnostic imaging equipment. An important recent development is the advent of new X-ray detectors, i.e., photon-counting detectors (PCD), which have been introduced in recent clinical prototype systems, called PCD computed tomography (PCD-CT) or photon-counting CT (PCCT) or spectral photon-counting CT (SPCCT) systems. PCD allows a pixel up to 200 microns pixels at iso-center, which is much smaller than that can be obtained with conventional energy integrating detectors (EID). PCDs have also a higher dose efficiency than EID mainly because of electronic noise suppression. In addition, the energy-resolving capabilities of these detectors allow generating spectral basis imaging, such as the mono-energetic images or the water/iodine material images as well as the K-edge imaging of a contrast agent based on atoms of high atomic number. In recent years, studies have therefore been conducted to determine the potential of PCD-CT as an alternative to conventional CT for chest imaging.