Nonlinear ill-posed problem in low-dose dental cone-beam computed tomography
This addresses the need for accurate dental imaging with low radiation, but it is incremental as it primarily reviews and discusses existing approaches rather than presenting new results.
The paper tackles the ill-posed nonlinear inverse problem in low-dose dental cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT), highlighting its challenges compared to standard CT and the limitations of existing methods in restoring tooth structures damaged by metal implants, while discussing potential solutions like using panoramic images and intra-oral scan data.
This paper describes the mathematical structure of the ill-posed nonlinear inverse problem of low-dose dental cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) and explains the advantages of a deep learning-based approach to the reconstruction of computed tomography images over conventional regularization methods. This paper explains the underlying reasons why dental CBCT is more ill-posed than standard computed tomography. Despite this severe ill-posedness, the demand for dental CBCT systems is rapidly growing because of their cost competitiveness and low radiation dose. We then describe the limitations of existing methods in the accurate restoration of the morphological structures of teeth using dental CBCT data severely damaged by metal implants. We further discuss the usefulness of panoramic images generated from CBCT data for accurate tooth segmentation. We also discuss the possibility of utilizing radiation-free intra-oral scan data as prior information in CBCT image reconstruction to compensate for the damage to data caused by metal implants.