Feasibility study on low-dosage digital tomosynthesis (DTS) using a multislit collimation technique

Abstract In this study, we investigated an effective low-dose digital tomosynthesis(DTS) where a multislit collimatorplaced between the X-ray tubeand the patient oscillates during projection data acquisition, partially blocking the X-ray beam to the patient thereby reducing the radiation dosage. We performed a simulation using the proposed DTS with two sets of multislit collimatorsboth having a 50% duty cycle and investigated the image characteristics to demonstrate the feasibility of this proposed approach. In the simulation, all projections were taken at a tomographic angle of θ = ± 5 0 ° and an angle step of Δ θ = 2 ° . We utilized an iterative algorithm based on a compressed-sensing (CS) scheme for more accurate DTS reconstruction. Using the proposed DTS, we successfully obtained CS-reconstructed DTS images with no bright-band artifacts around the multislit edges of the collimator, thus maintaining the image quality. Therefore, the use of multislit collimationin current real-world DTS systems can reduce the radiation dosage to patients.