Bone density measurements in cone-beam computed tomography

Correlation between gray values of cone-beam computed tomograms and Hounsfield units of computed tomograms: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Purpose

The aim of this review was to systematically analyze the available literature on the correlation between the gray values (GVs) of cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) and the Hounsfield units (HUs) of computed tomography (CT) for assessing bone mineral density.

Materials and Methods

A literature search was carried out in PubMed, Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, Scopus, and LILACS for studies published through September 2021. In vitro, in vivo, and animal studies that analyzed the correlations GVs of CBCT and HUs of CT were included in this review. The review was prepared according to the PRISMA checklist for systematic reviews, and the risk of bias was assessed using the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies tool. A quantitative analysis was performed using a fixed-effects model.

Results

The literature search identified a total of 5,955 studies, of which 14 studies were included for the qualitative analysis and 2 studies for the quantitative analysis. A positive correlation was observed between the GVs of CBCT and HUs of CT. Out of the 14 studies, 100% had low risks of bias for the domains of patient selection, index test, and reference standards, while 95% of studies had a low risk of bias for the domain of flow and timing. The fixed-effects meta-analysis performed for Pearson correlation coefficients between CBCT and CT showed a moderate positive correlation (r=0.669; 95% CI, 0.388 to 0.836; P<0.05).

Conclusion

The available evidence showed a positive correlation between the GVs of CBCT and HUs of CT.

Improved Vinegar & Wellington calibration for estimation of fluid saturation and porosity from CT images for a core flooding test under geologic carbon storage conditions

X-ray computed tomography (CT) of fluid flow in formation rocks is an important characterization technique in geologic carbon sequestration research to provide insight into the migration and capillary trapping of CO₂ under reservoir conditions. An improved calibration method adapted from traditional Vinegar & Wellington calibration is proposed to map the 3D pore and fluid distributions from the CT images of CO₂/brine displacement flooding. Similar to Vinegar & Wellington calibration, the proposed method adopts the linear scaling law of CT number transformation to mass density. However, different from Vinegar & Wellington calibration that uses a 100% brine-saturated core image and a 100% CO₂-saturated core image as references to calculate CO₂ and brine saturations at all time steps, the proposed method uses the CT numbers of CO₂ and brine to calculate the incremental of CO₂ and brine saturations from time step i to time step i +1. The method is intended for cases in which the two 100% brine saturation and 100% CO₂ saturation images can not be successfully obtained. Overall, the improved calibration proposed by this study presents more reasonable results of CO₂ and brine distribution in a Berea sandstone core, as compared to traditional Vinegar & Wellington calibration. The reconstructed porosity image agrees with the laminated structure of the Berea sandstone core, and the average porosity evaluated over the entire core (0.176) is comparable to the physical porosity (0.165). Furthermore, the reconstructed saturation images using the improved calibration reveal a flat piston-like flooding front from a homogeneous longitudinal-section of the 3D orthogonal view and preferential fingerings from another non-homogeneous longitudinal-section, which are not present in the reconstructed saturation images using traditional Vinegar & Wellington calibration. Concerns and causes with respect to the uncertainty of linear CT number calibration are also explained, and approaches to alleviate the uncertainty are suggested.