C-arm technique with distance driven for nephrolithiasis and kidney stones detection: Preliminary study

Kidney stone is among the common painful disorders of the urinary system. The presence of stones in the kidney refers to Nephrolithiasis. For nephrolithiasis and kidney stones detection, a C-arm tomographic technique was investigated in this paper to generate three dimensional kidney structural information. A series of two dimensional (2D) x-ray projection images were acquired by moving the x-ray tube to different positions around the object over limited angular view with C-arm gantry. The results of our experiments were obtained by using a kidney phantom with low radiation dosage. Reconstruction algorithms based on distance driven (DD) method were developed for C-arm tomographic technique. Computer simulation study was done with simulated tomographic project images of spherical objects to evaluate the performance of each reconstruction algorithm. Preliminary results showed the capability to generate volume information of the kidney for nephrolithiasis and kidney stone detection.