Simultaneous super resolution and denoising in X-ray CT using deep learning

Background It is common for X-ray computed tomography (CT) images to be reconstructed differently for various clinical examination purposes. This is primarily because we aim to meet two clinical requirements: improving spatial resolution and reducing noise by changing the reconstruction parameters. Objective Two deep learning-based methods, super resolution (SR) and denoising, respectively, have been proposed to address these requests. We present a single neural network that can perform SR and denoising simultaneously. Methods We propose using existing ultra-high-resolution CT (UHR-CT) data to achieve high spatial resolution and reduces noise. We generated specific input data, which is normal-resolution and high-noise data, simulated from UHR-CT data. Afterwards, we apply the network to NR-CT data, the resulting method, called SR-Denoise deep-learning reconstruction (DLR). In experiments, we measured modulation transfer function as the quantitative study. We also evaluated the performance using both simulated and real clinical data in NR-CT data, with UHR-CT data serving as the ground truth. Results SR-Denoise DLR achieved performance on both SR and denoising tasks that was equivalent to training them individually and outperformed the methods currently used in clinical settings. Conclusions SR-Denoise DLR utilizes the spatial resolution of UHR-CT and takes advantage of NR-CT to significantly reduce noise.