METHOD FOR DETERMINING A CHARACTERISTIC BLOOD VALUE, COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY DEVICE, COMPUTER PROGRAM AND ELECTRONICALLY READABLE STORAGE MEDIUM

• US 20190325575A1
• Filed: 04/17/2019
• Published: 10/24/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 04/20/2018
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Siemens Healthineers AG (Siemens AG)
• Original Assignee: Siemens Healthcare GMBH (Siemens AG)
• Inventors: YAN, Jing, FLOHR, Thomas, SCHMIDT, Bernhard
• Granted Patent: US 11,017,529 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 6/032 Transmission computed tomography [CT]
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 6/4241 using energy resolving detectors, e.g. photon counting
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 6/469 for selecting a region of interest [ROI]
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 6/481 involving the use of contrast agents
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 6/482 involving multiple energy imaging
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 6/507 for determination of haemodynamic parameters, e.g. perfusion CT
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 6/5217 extracting a diagnostic or physiological parameter from medical diagnostic data
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 11/008 Specific post-processing after tomographic reconstruction, e.g. voxelisation, metal artifact correction
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/10081 Computed x-ray tomography [CT]
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/10116 X-ray image
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/30024 Cell structures in vitro; Tissue sections in vitro
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/0012 Biomedical image inspection
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/11 Region-based segmentation
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 20/695 Preprocessing, e.g. image segmentation
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 30/40 for processing medical images, e.g. editing
• CPC Class Codes: G16H 50/30 for calculating health indices; for individual health risk assessment

Abstract

A method is for determining at least one first characteristic value of blood in a patient. In an embodiment, the method includes acquiring, via a computed tomography device, computed tomography data of the patient for at least two energy levels of radiation using multi-energy computed tomography; defining a region of interest including blood, in at least one image data set reconstructed from the computed tomography data acquired; determining, at least in the region of interest defined, attenuation coefficients for each energy level of the at least two energy levels; performing material decomposition into at least two materials, one material of the two materials being iron, using the attenuation coefficients determined, yielding at least a fraction of iron in the region of interest defined; and determining the at least one first characteristic value, at least one of as and from the fraction of iron yielded.

Claims

1. A method for determining at least one first characteristic value of blood in a patient, the at least one first characteristic value describing iron content of the blood, the method comprising:

acquiring, via a computed tomography device, computed tomography data of the patient for at least two energy levels of radiation using multi-energy computed tomography;

defining a region of interest including blood, in at least one image data set reconstructed from the computed tomography data acquired;

determining, at least in the region of interest defined, attenuation coefficients for each energy level of the at least two energy levels;

performing material decomposition into at least two materials, one material of the two materials being iron, using the attenuation coefficients determined, yielding at least a fraction of iron in the region of interest defined; and

determining the at least one first characteristic value, at least one of as and from the fraction of iron yielded.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the region of interest is defined at least one of at least partly manually and at least partly automatically.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the region of interest is defined as a part of a major blood vessel.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein a two material decomposition is performed, another of the two materials comprising both blood plasma and erythrocytes.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least two materials include three materials and wherein a three material decomposition is performed, another two materials of the three materials being blood plasma and erythrocytes.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein at least one second characteristic value of blood is determined from fractions of blood plasma and erythrocytes yielded from the three material decomposition.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein one of the at least one second characteristic value is a haematocrit value.

8. The method of claim 5, wherein blood plasma and erythrocytes presumably have a comparable spectral behaviour, wherein respective fractions are calculated in a space spanned by attenuation values at the at least two energy levels by projecting a measured point along an iron direction onto a line connecting a pure blood plasma point and a pure erythrocytes point and determining the fractions according the measured point projected, dividing the line.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein one of the at least one first characteristic value is a mean corpuscular haemoglobin value.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one first characteristic value of blood is determined in at least two measurements, separated in time, to determine a trend information.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein a photon counting detector is used to acquire the computed tomography data.

13. A non-transitory computer readable medium storing a computer program which, when the computer program is executed in a control device of a computed tomography device, is configured to perform the method of claim 1.

14. An electronically readable storage medium, storing a computer program which, when the computer program is executed in a control device of a computed tomography device, is configured to perform the method of claim 1.

15. The method of claim 2, wherein the region of interest is determined using a segmentation algorithm.

16. The method of claim 3, wherein the region of interest is defined as a part of an aorta.

17. The method of claim 4, wherein a photon counting detector is used to acquire the computed tomography data.

18. The method of claim 5, wherein a photon counting detector is used to acquire the computed tomography data.

12. A computed tomography device, comprising:

at least one acquisition arrangement including an x-ray source and an x-ray detector; and

a control device, configured to determine at least one first characteristic value of blood in a patient, the at least one first characteristic value describing iron content of the blood, by at least;

acquiring, via a computed tomography device, computed tomography data of the patient for at least two energy levels of radiation using multi-energy computed tomography,

defining a region of interest including blood, in at least one image data set reconstructed from the computed tomography data acquired,

determining, at least in the region of interest defined, attenuation coefficients for each energy level of the at least two energy levels,

performing material decomposition into at least two materials, one material of the two materials being iron, using the attenuation coefficients determined, yielding at least a fraction of iron in the region of interest defined, and

determining the at least one first characteristic value, at least one of as and from the fraction of iron yielded.

19. The computed tomography device of claim 12, wherein the x-ray detector is a photon counting detector.