Ruifeng Chen

Changzhu Liu, Ruisi He, Haoxiang Zhang et al.

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) has recently been gained attention as an effective technique improving the coverage and performance of communication systems by creating additional communication links. Deployment of RIS is crucial for overcoming signal coverage limitations, especially in high-speed train (HST) scenarios. Considerable research has been performed assuming perfect channel state information (CSI). However, due to the rapidly time-varying fading channels and feedback delays, achieving perfect CSI at the base station (BS) is not feasible in the HST scenarios. To tackle this problem, this paper investigates a robust design strategy for RIS-aided HST communication coverage enhancement, particularly focusing on cascaded BS-RIS-user channels at BS (CBRUB). The study explores the optimization problem under two types distinct of models: centered on minimizing transmit power subject to worst-case rate constraints within the bounded CSI error (BCSIE) model, and the other focusing on outage probability (OP) constraints under the statistical CSI error (SCSIE) model. We use the S-procedure to approximate the non-convex (NC) constraints, converting the worst-case rate constraints into linear matrix inequalities. Additionally, the Bernstein-type inequality is applied to transform the OP constraints into second-order cone constraints and linear inequalities. The simulation analysis results show that CBRUB errors have a significant effect on system performance compared to direct CSI errors.

Qiaoxin Li, Ruifeng Chen, Peng Wang et al.

Dual-energy computed tomography (DECT) has been widely used to obtain quantitative elemental composition of imaged subjects for personalized and precise medical diagnosis. Compared with DECT leveraging advanced X-ray source and/or detector technologies, the use of the sequential-scanning data acquisition scheme to implement DECT may make a broader impact on clinical practice because this scheme requires no specialized hardware designs and can be directly implemented into conventional CT systems. However, since the concentration of iodinated contrast agent in the imaged subject varies over time, sequentially scanned data sets acquired at two tube potentials are temporally inconsistent. As existing material basis image reconstruction approaches assume that the data sets acquired at two tube potentials are temporally consistent, the violation of this assumption results in inaccurate quantification of material concentration. In this work, we developed sequential-scanning DECT imaging using high temporal resolution image reconstruction and error-compensated material basis image generation, ACCELERATION in short, to address the technical challenge induced by temporal inconsistency of sequentially scanned data sets and improve quantification accuracy of material concentration in sequential-scanning DECT. ACCELERATION has been validated and evaluated using numerical simulation data sets generated from clinical human subject exams and experimental human subject studies. Results demonstrated the improvement of quantification accuracy and image quality using ACCELERATION.

Haotian Zhao, Ruifeng Chen, Jing Yan et al.

To shorten the door-to-puncture time for better treating patients with acute ischemic stroke, it is highly desired to obtain quantitative cerebral perfusion images using C-arm cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) equipped in the interventional suite. However, limited by the slow gantry rotation speed, the temporal resolution and temporal sampling density of typical C-arm CBCT are much poorer than those of multi-detector-row CT in the diagnostic imaging suite. The current quantitative perfusion imaging includes two cascaded steps: time-resolved image reconstruction and perfusion parametric estimation. For time-resolved image reconstruction, the technical challenge imposed by poor temporal resolution and poor sampling density causes inaccurate quantification of the temporal variation of cerebral artery and tissue attenuation values. For perfusion parametric estimation, it remains a technical challenge to appropriately design the handcrafted regularization for better solving the associated deconvolution problem. These two challenges together prevent obtaining quantitatively accurate perfusion images using C-arm CBCT. The purpose of this work is to simultaneously address these two challenges by combining the two cascaded steps into a single joint optimization problem and reconstructing quantitative perfusion images directly from the measured sinogram data. In the developed direct cerebral perfusion parametric image reconstruction technique, TRAINER in short, the quantitative perfusion images have been represented as a subject-specific conditional generative model trained under the constraint of the time-resolved CT forward model, perfusion convolutional model, and the subject's own measured sinogram data. Results shown in this paper demonstrated that using TRAINER, quantitative cerebral perfusion images can be accurately obtained using C-arm CBCT in the interventional suite.