@inproceedings {1755, title = {A Novel adaptive PCA Based Denoising Technique for Ultra-High-Rate Computed Tomography}, booktitle = {7th Conference on Industrial Computed Tomography (iCT 2017)}, year = {2017}, month = {02/2017}, publisher = {ndt.net}, organization = {ndt.net}, address = {Leuven (Belgium)}, abstract = {Increasing the X-ray tomography acquisition rate is of high importance especially in medical applications as well as dynamic processes investigation. Thanks to the high brilliance of synchrotron radiation, it is possible to reduce the exposure time and do a tomographic scan with a sub-second temporal resolution which allows following dynamic processes in 4D (3D space + time). On the other hand, increasing the acquisition rate leads to more background noise which strictly limits the advantages of high rate scan. We apply a new fast denoising technique using universal properties of eigen-spectrum of random covariance matrices. Our proposed technique is established based on the principal component analysis (PCA) of redundant data which shows that most of the signal-related variance is contained in a few components, whereas the noise is spread over all components. Extensive numerical evaluations of the proposed technique on a real dataset were acquired at the TOMCAT beamline with its ultra-fast endstation, show significant improvement in the quality of reconstructed images and elimination of noise.}, keywords = {denoising, eigenvalue, principal component analysis (PCA), ultra-fast scan}, author = {Karim Zarei Zefreh and Federica Marone Welford and Jan Sijbers}, editor = {Mehrdad Taki} } @inproceedings {1667, title = {Investigation on Effect of scintillator thickness on Afterglow in Indirect X-ray Detectors}, booktitle = {6th Conference on Industrial Computed Tomography, Wels, Austria (iCT 2016)}, year = {2016}, abstract = {Solid-state scintillation detectors are widely used in modern multi-slice CT systems as well as synchrotron micro-tomography beamlines. Amongst other parameters, the performance of these detectors depends on the thickness of the scintillator. Thicker scintillators result in higher emission intensities, yet the resolution deteriorates as the thickness increases. To achieve a higher scan speed, thicker scintillators are more common. The thickness of scintillators however may influence the afterglow. In this paper, we investigate the effect of scintillator thickness on the afterglow, using scintillating screens of two different materials (LAG:Ce and Gadox) and different thicknesses. Experimental results show that, apart from the scintillator material and excitation condition, the thickness of scintillator has a decisive role on the scintillator decay and particularly on the afterglow. }, keywords = {afterglow, flat-panel, image lag, scintillator thickness, synchrotron, x-ray detector}, url = {http://www.ndt.net/article/ctc2016/papers/ICT2016_paper_id74.pdf}, author = {Karim Zarei Zefreh and Jan De Beenhouwer and Federica Marone Welford and Jan Sijbers} } @inproceedings {1719, title = {Investigation on the effect of exposure time on scintillator afterglow for ultra-fast tomography acquisition}, booktitle = {18th International Workshop on Radiation Imaging Detectors}, volume = {11}, year = {2016}, pages = {C12014}, publisher = {IOP Publishing}, organization = {IOP Publishing}, address = {Barcelona, Spain}, doi = {10.1088/1748-0221/11/12/C12014}, author = {Karim Zarei Zefreh and Federica Marone Welford and Jan Sijbers} } @article {1748, title = {Investigation on the effect of exposure time on scintillator afterglow for ultra-fast tomography acquisition}, journal = {Journal of Instrumentation}, volume = {11}, year = {2016}, month = {12/2016}, abstract = {Thanks to the ultra-fast endstation of the TOMCAT beamline, it is possible to do a tomographic scan with a sub-second temporal resolution which allows following dynamic processes in 4D (3D space + time). This ultra- high-rate tomography acquisition, exploiting the distinctive peculiarities of synchrotron radiation, provides nondestructive investigation of many dynamic processes which were not possible in the past. For example a continuous tensile test has been conducted recently in-situ for the first time with a frequency of 20 tomograms per second (20 Hz acquisition frequency). In the ultra-fast endstation a scintillator is used to convert X-ray to visible photons that can be detected by the camera. However, this conversion is not ideal and the scintillator response decays exponentially with afterglow. Afterglow can cause resolution degradation and artifacts (such as ring and band) especially with high rotation speed. On the other hand, to achieve a higher scan speed, thicker scintillators are more common because they result in higher emission intensities that can compensate the short exposure time in fast scans. However, the resolution deteriorates as the scintillator{\textquoteright}s thickness increases and thicker scintillators show higher afterglow. Performing many ultra-fast scans at the TOMCAT beamline with different acquisition rate, we demonstrate how the exposure time effects on the projection data and reconstructed images. Using two different thicknesses of LAG scintillator we also investigate the afterglow artifacts for different acquisition rate and exposure time.}, keywords = {4DCT, computed tomography, exposure time, scintillator}, doi = {10.1088/1748-0221/11/12/C12014}, url = {http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-0221/11/12/C12014/meta;jsessionid=DE490396BDCED3C5746F4059065713A1.c3.iopscience.cld.iop.org}, author = {Karim Zarei Zefreh}, editor = {Federica Marone Welford} } @article {1407, title = {DART: a new approach for super-resolution reconstruction of license plates}, journal = {Journal of Electronic Imaging}, volume = {22}, year = {2013}, chapter = {041111}, doi = {10.1117/1.JEI.22.4.041111}, url = {http://electronicimaging.spiedigitallibrary.org/article.aspx?articleid=1733763}, author = {Karim Zarei Zefreh and Wim Van Aarle and Kees Joost Batenburg and Jan Sijbers} } @article {1419, title = {Super-Resolution of License Plate Images using Algebraic Reconstruction Technique}, journal = {Journal of Image and Graphics}, volume = {1}, year = {2013}, month = {2013}, pages = {94 - 98}, publisher = {Engineering and Technology Publishing (ETP)}, address = {USA}, abstract = {In this paper, an iterative super-resolution reconstruction method is introduced for license plate recognition. A high-resolution image of the license plate is reconstructed by fusing the information derived from a set of subpixel shifted low-resolution images. The reconstruction problem is formulated as a system of linear equations that is solved by using the simultaneous algebraic reconstruction technique (SIRT). Simulation experiments show that SIRT can reconstruct a HR image with superior quality compared to conventional super-resolution reconstruction methods.}, keywords = {algebraic reconstruction technique, license plate, reconstruction, SIRT, super-resolution}, issn = {23013699}, doi = {10.12720/joig.1.2.94-98}, url = {http://www.joig.org/index.php?m=content\&c=index\&a=show\&catid=31\&id=41}, author = {Karim Zarei Zefreh and Wim Van Aarle and Kees Joost Batenburg and Jan Sijbers} }