MULTIDETECTOR CT

ARTIFACTS

-Amy Fiona Suresh Kumar

1st year, B.Sc RIT
CMC, Vellore

WHAT ARE ARTIFACTS?

ANY DISCREPANCY BETWEEN THE CT
NUMBERS REPRESENTED IN THE
IMAGE AND EXPECTED CT NUMBER
BASED ON THE LINEAR ATTENUATION
COEFFICIENT

APPEARANCE OF ARTEFACT
SHADING- due to a group of channels or views deviating gradually
from the true measurement
STREAKING- generally due to an inconsistency in a single
measurement
RINGS- due to errors in an individual detector calibration
DISTORTION- due to helical reconstruction

TYPES OF ARTIFACTS
ARTEFACTS

PATIENT
BASED

MOTION

METAL

SCANNER
BASED

INCOMPLE
TE
PROJECTIO
N

CUPPING
ARTEFACT

BEAM
BEAM
HARDENIN
HARDENING
G
ARTEFACTS
ARTIFACTS

RING
ARTEFACT

STREAKS
AND DARK
BANDS

CONE
BEAM
EFFECT

ZEBRA &
STAIRCASE
ARTIFACT

PARTIAL
VOLUMING
ARTIFACTS

SCANNER BASED ARTEFACT

PHYSICS BASED ARTIFACT

BEAM HARDENING
ARTEFACTS
Cupping Artefacts
Streaks & Dark bands

MECHANISM
An Xray beam is composed of individual photons with a range of
energies. As the beam PASSES THROUGH THE PATIENT, THE LOW
ENERGY PHOTONS ARE RAPIDLY ABSORBED. So the Xray beam
exiting the patient contains a lower % of low energy photons than
the entry beam- this is called as beam hardening.
The linear attenuation coefficient of a tissue is directly related to
the average energy of the xray beam. Hence the measured linear
attenuation coefficient of a tissue will be higher at beam entry site
than the exit site after hardening.

1. CUPPING ARTIFACTS
This results from reconstructing an image from a 360
degree tube rotation
Xrays passing through the middle portion of a
uniform cylindrical phantom are hardened more than
those passing through the edges because they are
passing through more material

CUPPING ARTEFACT

2.STREAKS & DARK BANDS

Streak artefacts occur between two dense objects in an image.
They occur because when the Xray goes through two dense objects
such as metal, bone, iodinated contrast or barium, higher degree of
beam hardening occurs compared to when the Xray goes through
one dense object depending on the tube position, bright streaks are
seen adjacent to dark streaks or bands

STREAK ARTEFACT

REMEDY
Increase kilovoltage Peak (Kvp)
Increase filtration
Decrease Slice thickness

RING ARTEFACT
MALFUNCTION OF A DETECTOR IN A THIRD GENERATION SCANNER

RING ARTEFACT
If one of the detectors is out of calibration on a
third generation (rotating Xray tube and detector
assembly), the detector will give a continuously
erroneous reading at each angular position,
resulting in a circular artefact

REMEDY
Detector Calibration
Detector Replacement

CONE BEAM EFFECT

As the number of sections acquired per rotation increases, a wider
collimation is required and the Xray beam becomes cone shaped
rather than fan shaped
Cone beam effect gets worse for increasing no.s of detector rows.
Thus, 16 section scanners should potentially be more badly
affected by artefacts than 4-section scanners

CONE BEAM ARTEFACTS

CONE BEAM ARTEFACTS

REMEDY
Manufactures have addressed the problem by
employing various forms of cone beam
reconstruction instead of the standard reconstruction
techniques used on 4-section scanners.

ZEBRA & STAIRCASE

ARTEFACT
Zebra artefact
Faint strip[es may be apparent in multi planar and 3D reformatted
images from helical data because the helical interpolation process
gives rise to a degree of noise in homogeneity along the Z-axis.
Staircase
Improper selection of slice thickness and slice incrementation
during generation of MPR and 3-d images.

ZEBRA & STAIRCASE

ARTIFACT

REMEDY
Decrease slice thickness
50% overlap on recon Slice incrementation.

PARTIAL VOLUMING
ARTEFACTS
Partial volume artefacts occur when a dense object
lying off-centre protrudes partway into the width of
the Xray beam. It results in shading artefacts

PARTIAL VOLUME
Thin slice selection
Thin slice incrementation

PATIENT BASED ARTEFACTS

MOTION
Motion artefact is caused by Voluntary motion and Involuntary
Motion.

REMEDY
Use of positioning aids
In some cases (eg. Pediatric patients), it may be necessary to
immobilize the patient by means of sedation
Using a short scan time as possible
Respiratory motion can be minimized if patients are able to hold
their breath during the scan
Cardiac gating: Techniques have been developed to produce
images by using data from just a fraction of the cardiac cycle, when
there is least cardiac motion. This is achieved by combining
electrocardiographic gating techniques with specialised methods of
image reconstruction.

METAL ARTEFACTS
The presence of metal objects in the scan field can
lead to severe streaking artefacts. They occur
because the density of the metal is beyond the
normal range that can be handled by the computer,
resulting in incomplete attenuation profiles.

METAL ARTEFACTS

REMEDY
Ask patients to take off removable metal objects such as jewellery
before scanning commences.
For non-removable items, such as dental fillings, prosthetic devices
and surgical clips it is sometimes possible to use gantry angulation
to exclude the metal inserts from scans of nearby anatomy
When it is impossible to scan the required anatomy without the
metal objects, increasing technique especially kilo voltage and
using thin sections will reduce the contribution due to partial
volume artefact
MAR (Metal artefact reduction) software

INCOMPLETE PROJECTION
ARTEFACT
Patient is not entirely enclosed in the scanning field of view.
Patients body can obstruct detectors. In addition, patient tissue
outside the SFOV will further harden the X-Ray beam. Artefact
appears as streaks and shading
Blocking of the reference channels at the sides of the detector
array may also interfere with data normalization and cause
streaking artefacts.

INCOMPLETE PROJECTION
ARTEFACT

REMEDY
Position the patient such that no parts lie outside the
scan field
Select larger SFOV
Raising the patients arms above their head during
Chest or Abdomen scans

THANKYOU!