Ultra-High-Resolution Photon-Counting-Detector CT with a Dedicated Denoising Convolutional Neural Network for Enhanced Temporal Bone Imaging

Ultra-high-resolution (UHR) photon-counting-detector (PCD) CT improves image resolution but increases noise, necessitating use of smoother reconstruction kernels that reduce resolution below the system's 0.110 mm maximum spatial resolution. To address this, a denoising convolutional neural network (CNN) was developed to reduce noise in images reconstructed with the available sharpest reconstruction kernel while preserving resolution for enhanced temporal bone visualization.