Develop and test an implementation for prospective cardiac and respiratory gated imaging on a multisource stationary computed tomography (CT) system. Prospective cardiac gated imaging is commonplace in cardiovascular imaging, but has yet to be demonstrated on a multisource stationary gantry imaging system. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the potential of the scanner for clinical use. The existing stationary head computed tomography scanner (s-HCT) was converted into a prospective cardiac CT scanner. A step-and-shoot protocol was implemented with logic for firing the x-ray sources upon the incidence of a physiologically correlated trigger signal, generated using a respiratory sensor and/or EKG, processed on the BioVet to generate a logic-level gating signal. To demonstrate system performance, a dynamic respiratory phantom was imaged with and without gating, then imaged while stationary for reference. Images of the respiratory phantom with gating applied were nearly indistinguishable from the reference image. Ungated images varied largely from the reference. Separation between bead centers from reference deviated by 0.1mm with gating, compared to 8.4mm ungated. We successfully developed and demonstrated a multisource stationary CT capable of prospective cardiac gated acquisitions. Images demonstrate gated scans are not easily distinguishable from reference, and ungated images are substantially different from the reference. Phantom studies show the potential for this implementation and show value for pre-clinical animal experimentation.
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