Accurate Resolution Measurement for X-Ray Micro-CT Systems

K. Sen Sharmaa, S. Seshadrib, M. Feserb, G. Wanga

a

Virginia Tech, Stanger Street, SBES, ICTAS Building, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA b Xradia Inc., 5052 Commercial Circle, Concord, CA 94520, USA

Abstract. Accurate measurement of modulation transfer function (MTF), or alternatively point spread function, of an xray micro-CT system is essential for various purposes to determine scanner resolution, to retrieve further information about scanned object by image-processing, etc. In this paper, a new method for MTF measurement is proposed that can be used with any resolution pattern and is more adept at studying MTF spatial variation than traditional method of using bar pattern analysis. Resolution target used to determine micro-CT resolution was scanned in a lab-based nano-CT system the image from the nano-CT gave the ground truth. The ground truth was quantitavely compared with microCT projection of same target to determine the point spread function of the system. Results matched well with bar pattern analysis but the new method was able to study spatial variation while bar pattern analysis failed. Keywords: X-ray microscopy, Micro-CT, MTF, resolution, point spread function PACS: 07.85.Tt, 41.50.+h, 06.20.fb

INTRODUCTION
The modulation transfer function (MTF) is the measurement of choice to characterize spatial resolution of an xray micro-CT scanner. An equivalent approach is estimation of the point spread function (PSF). Various methods for MTF measurements are used in CT [1,2] and micro-CT [3-5]. However, there is no standardized protocol. A common technique is to use variable width bar patterns [5]. However, as shown in Fig. 1(c), the image of the bar pattern covers a large area in the field of view, and the systems spatial frequency response may not be isotropic over the entire area. We propose an MTF/PSF estimation technique that can be used with any x-ray imaging resolution pattern to study the local variation of image resolution. The proposed method is insensitive to quality of fabrication of the test pattern.

METHODS
In this study, MTF was calculated by the bar pattern analysis and proposed method as follow:

Bar Pattern Analysis

The average intensity profile along the bar pattern was analyzed to determine the peaks and troughs (IMAX and IMIN) and their locations (nMAX, nMIN). The modulation for a peak-trough pair was calculated as:

M=

IMAX IMIN IMAX + IMIN

(1)

The spatial frequency (in lp/mm) for this pair was calculated as

f =

1 1000 d

(2)

FIGURE 1. Steps in matching of nano-CT and micro-CT images. (a) Nano-CT image Nano-CT projection image of the resolution target, acquired by Xradia NanoXCT-100 system. (b) True image generated from the nano-CT projection after grayscale matching and scaling. (c) Target A projection image of the same target using Xradia MicroXCT-400 40x objective. ROI in target image (marked by dotted bounding box in the middle), which is registered to true image, is used in proposed MTF calculation method. A much larger region in field-of-view is required to measure MTF by bar pattern analysis (marked by line on top). (d) Target ROI Zoomed in view of ROI marked by dotted bounding box in (c) [Resolution pattern bar widths are marked in (a), (c) and (d): (p) 0.5m, (q) 1m, (r) 2m, and (s) 4m. Scale bar, marked at bottom right corner of each image, is 10m in (a), (b) and (d), and 100m in (c).]

where d is the gap between two successive peaks (in m)

Proposed Method
1. Acquisition: Images of the X500-200-30 resolution target (Xradia Inc., CA) were acquired using two imaging systems Xradia NanoXCT-100 (nano-CT), the system to offer ground truth, and Xradia MicroXCT-400 (micro-CT), the system under study. Figure 1(a) is the center of a resolution target imaged in the nano-CT while Fig. 1(c) shows a much larger area of the same target imaged by the micro-CT. The nanoXCT system utilizes a Cu x-ray source, a reflective capillary optic to focus 8KeV Cu Ka x-rays onto the sample and a Fresnel zone plate to form the image. The resolution of the microscope is determined by the outermost zone width of the zone plate and resolutions below 40nm can be achieved [6]. The focused x-rays are absorbed by a scintillator and converted to visible light a microscope objective focuses this light onto the CCD. The micro-CT employs projection based x-ray imaging. The detection of x-rays utilizes scintillator and a visible light objective allowing resolution below 1m [6]. Grayscale Matching: Depending upon the design of the condenser and zone plate, roughly 2/3 - 3/4 of the xrays reaching the detector in a nanoXCT system are Cu Ka x-rays (8KeV) and the rest come from the continuum and Cu Kb x-rays. In contrast to this, the beam in micro-CT is fully polychromatic. Due to this difference, the image intensities in the nano-CT image had to be compensated before further calculations. The nano-CT projection image was segmented into three regions background, bars, and fine edges. Background and bars were segmented by binary thresholding by Otsus method [7] while the edges were segmented manually. This segmentation had to be done only once for all results presented here. Next, pixels in each of these segmented regions were assigned the average grayscale value of corresponding region in the target image (micro-CT image under study). Scaling: The smallest feature size in the target is 0.5m, and is much larger than the approximately 150nm resolution achieved in the current configuration of the nanoXCT system. Thus the nano-CT image can be considered to represent the exact (unblurred) geometry of the target pattern, as shown in Fig. 1(a). The grayscale-matched image calculated in previous step, was scaled down to have pixel size equal to that of the target image. Scaling ratio was calculated as:

2.

3.

s=

l1 l2

(3)

where l1 and l2 are the lengths in pixels of a chosen feature manually marked in micro-CT and nano-CT images respectively. This image, henceforth referred to as the true image, is shown in Fig. 1(b). This image accurately

depicts the maximum resolution for the pixel size of the micro-CT detector though the finest features are not resolved, many more features are resolved than actual micro-CT image of same ROI shown in Fig. 1(d). 4. Registration: The target image shown in Fig. 1(c) covers a much larger field-of-view compared to nano-CT image. ROI in target image which best matched the true image was automatically determined by minimizing sum of squared intensity differences [8], and is marked by bounding box in Fig. 1(c). Blurring: The true image was blurred with Gaussian PSFs of varying standard deviations. The PSF that gave the best match (in terms of minimum sum of squared intensity differences between blurred true image and ROI of target image) was selected. MTF: The selected PSF was processed by the 2D Fourier Transform to derive the MTF.

5.

6.

RESULTS
Nano-CT image was acquired in large field of view mode of Xradia NanoXCT-100 the effective pixel size is 0.13m. Micro-CT image was acquired with a 40x objective, yielding a pixel size of 0.58m, at the following settings - 60kV, 100A. PSF was determined by proposed method. Blurred true image selected by minimizing sum of squared intensity differences closely resembled the target micro-CT image (Fig. 2). While the true image differed from target image by a value of 19.38 (mean of squared intensity differences), blurring true image with Gaussian PSF (standard deviation of 1.5) brought down the mean squared difference to a minimum value of 4.14. Next, micro-CT images were acquired with same settings as above, and source voltage set at 40kV and 80kV. MTF was calculated by bar pattern analysis and proposed method, and as shown in the plots of Figs. 3(a) and 3(b), the results matched closely. Comparing target image ROI-s in Figs. 3(a) and 3(b), it is observed that 40kV image visibly has better resolution this is possibly due to small changes in source size and increased blurring inside the scintillator due to high energy x-rays. For the image with better visible resolution (40kV), MTF values are expected to be higher. This is confirmed by comparing MTF plots in Figs. 3(a) and 3(b). The standard deviation of selected Gaussian PSF was 1.7 at 40kV and 1.9 at 80kV.

FIGURE 2. Blurred true image (a) was matched to micro-CT image acquired at 40x (b) for a Gaussian PSF with standard deviation of 1.5. Scale bar is 10m.

FIGURE 3. Micro-CT image and corresponding MTF calculations with 40x objective for two different tube voltages (a) 40kV and (b) 80kV. Scale bar is 10m.

FIGURE 4. Spatial variation in MTF was measured by the proposed method. Image of target off-centered in FOV had poorer resolution than centered image (compare feature marked by arrows). Scale bar is 10m.

As shown in Fig. 1(c), spatial variation in PSF cannot be studied by bar pattern analysis as the bar pattern covers a large region in the FOV. Two images of the target placed at center and off-center (150m away from center) in an FOV of 420m (pixel size of 0.42m) were acquired at following settings 60kV, 100A. The images were analyzed by proposed method and the derived MTF, as shown in Fig. 4, was found to be different. MTF at higher spatial frequencies was higher for centered image than for off-centered image. Expressed in units of pixels (px), the S.D. of the Gaussian PSF selected by new method was 2.6px (FWHM: 6.12px) for centered image, and 2.9px (FWHM: 6.83px) for off-centered image. This qualitatively agreed with the observed differences in fine features in the image, as shown in Fig. 4. This spatial variation is expected due to the cone-beam geometry of projection imaging employed in the scanner the source has a finite focal spot size, and blurring inside the scintillator is dependent on the angle of incidence of x-rays and the extent of penetration of x-rays inside the scintillator.

DISCUSSION
The new method was verified by comparing results by this method with those calculated by bar pattern analysis. The method is sensitive to the scan parameter changes and was able to track resolution changes keyed to scanning configurations (Figs. 3, 4). The new method is able to detect spatial variation of MTF (Fig. 4) but bar pattern analysis, which uses a much larger portion of FOV for each calculation, cannot. In our current implementation, only a Gaussian PSF was assumed. In the future, we plan to study other candidates for the PSF (Lorentzian, Voigt etc.).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The work is partially supported by the NSF/MRI program (CMMI-0923297), NIH/NCRR grant (RR025667) and NIH/NIBIB grants (EB002667, EB011785).

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