Granted Patent B2

US 12,592,016 · App. 18/054,583 · Granted Mar 31, 2026

Inventors: Pierce Ellingson (Cincinnati, OH); Paul Schleyer (Knoxville, TN)

Assignee: Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc.

G06T11/008G06T2210/41

Abstract

Claims (31)

1 . A method of generating an attenuation map, comprising:

receiving computed tomography (CT) scan data for a CT scan including an imaging component, wherein the CT scan data comprises a plurality of voxels each having a scanned CT value;

identifying material in each voxel of the plurality of voxels by comparing the scanned CT value for the voxel with predetermined CT values for a plurality of materials related to a radiodensity of one of organic material or non-organic material and energy levels of the CT scan;

determining an image modality-specific voxel attenuation value for each voxel based on the predetermined CT value and an attenuation value for the identified one of the organic material or the non-organic material; and

generating an attenuation map including the determined imaging modality-specific voxel attenuation value for each voxel, wherein the attenuation map is configured for attenuation correction of an imaging modality including the imaging component with a field of view of the imaging modality, modality-specific attenuation values, and energy-specific attenuation values.

2 . The method of generating an attenuation map of claim 1 , wherein the identified material of each voxel is a material in the plurality of materials having a predetermined CT value less than or equal to the scanned CT value for the voxel.

3 . The method of generating an attenuation map of claim 1 , wherein the voxel attenuation value for each voxel is determined based on a ratio of the scanned CT value for the voxel and the predetermined CT value for the identified material.

4 . The method of generating an attenuation map of claim 3 , wherein the voxel attenuation value for each voxel (μ voxel ) is determined as:

μ

voxel

=

μ

PET

×

μ

CT

⁢

scanned

μ

CT

⁢

material

where μ PET is a predetermined attenuation value for the imaging modality at an expected energy, μ CT scanned is the scanned CT value for the voxel, and μ CT material is the predetermined CT value for the identified material.

5 . The method of generating an attenuation map of claim 1 , comprising registering the attenuation map to a coordinate system of the imaging modality.

6 . The method of generating an attenuation map of claim 5 , wherein registering the attenuation map comprises:

Receiving registration scan data for a registration scan including the imaging component within a field of view from the imaging modality;

Registering a position of the imaging component in the attenuation map to a position of the imaging component in the registration scan data.

7 . The method of generating an attenuation map of claim 6 , wherein the position of the imaging component in the attenuation map is registered to a position of the imaging component in the registration scan data using rigid or non-rigid body registration.

8 . The method of generating an attenuation map of claim 1 , wherein the CT scan data is received from a photon-counting CT system.

9 . The method of generating an attenuation map of claim 1 , wherein identifying a material in each voxel of the plurality of voxels comprises performing image recognition on the CT scan data.

10 . The method of generating an attenuation map of claim 9 , wherein the image recognition comprises clustering.

Assignments (1)

Continuity (1)

References Cited (11)