Dose limitations for the estimation of functional cardiac parameters in rodents

The examination of small rodents using cone-beam micro-CT focusing on functional cardiac parameters is a routine task in most small animal imaging labs. The evaluation of these parameters often requires the reconstruction of phase-correlated volumes using appropriate reconstruction methods. The phase-correlated volumes suffer from high noise and streak artifacts unless not acquired with high dose. It was shown that these high dose values cause metabolic inferences and e.g. influence tumor growth. Recently, several algorithms in the context of the compressed sensing framework have been proposed that address this issue. These algorithms allow for a reduction in dose while image quality and hence the accuracy of estimated parameters is maintained. We therefore provide a study that - exemplarily for three algorithms - illustrates what reduction in dose can be achieved without sacrificing image quality or accuracy if these sophisticated algorithms are used.