Parametric-MAA: fast, object-centric avoidance of metal artifacts for intraoperative CBCT.

Abstract

Purpose: Metal artifacts remain a persistent issue in intraoperative CBCT imaging. Particularly in orthopedic and trauma applications, these artifacts obstruct clinically relevant areas around the implant, reducing the modality's clinical value. Metal artifact avoidance (MAA) methods have shown potential to improve image quality through trajectory adjustments, but often fail in clinical practice due to their focus on irrelevant objects and high computational demands. To address these limitations, we introduce the novel parametric metal artifact avoidance (P-MAA) method.

Methods: The P-MAA method first detects keypoints in two scout views using a deep learning model. These keypoints are used to model each clinically relevant object as an ellipsoid, capturing its position, extent, and orientation. We hypothesize that fine details of object shapes are less critical for artifact reduction. Based on these ellipsoidal representations, we devise a computationally efficient metric for scoring view trajectories, enabling fast, CPU-based optimization. A detection model for object localization was trained using both simulated and real data and validated on real clinical cases. The scoring method was benchmarked against a raytracing-based approach.

Results: The trained detection model achieved a mean average recall of 0.78, demonstrating generalizability to unseen clinical cases. The ellipsoid-based scoring method closely approximated results using raytracing and was effective in complex clinical scenarios. Additionally, the ellipsoid method provided a 33-fold increase in speed, without the need for GPU acceleration.

Conclusion: The P-MAA approach provides a feasible solution for metal artifact avoidance in CBCT imaging, enabling fast trajectory optimization while focusing on clinically relevant objects. This method represents a significant step toward practical intraoperative implementation of MAA techniques.