DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.6351647
title: Trajectory with Overlapping Projections x-ray Computed Tomography (TOP-CT) dataset of 23 mandarins moving over a circular trajectory

description: Summary
This dataset is a collection of X-ray projection images of 23 mandarins moving over a circular trajectory in such a way that the projections of multiple adjacent mandarins overlap. The dataset was acquired to test out Trajectory with Overlapping Projections x-ray Computed Tomography (TOP-CT), about which a paper is published in IEEE Transactions on Computational Imaging [Schut 2022].
 
Description
Sample information
The samples are 23 mandarins. The first 10 are of the Nadorcott cultivar, and the remaining 13 are of the Clemenrubi cultivar. The diameter of the mandarins ranges between 50 and 58 mm. Per sample metadata can be found in the mandarin_metadata.csv file.
Scanner information
The dataset is acquired in the FleX-ray Laboratory, developed by TESCAN-XRE, located at CWI in Amsterdam. The CT scanner consists consists of a cone-beam microfocus polychromatic X-ray point source, and a 1944x1536 pixel, 14-bit, flat detector panel (Dexela1512NDT). Full details can be found in [Coban 2020].
Scanning geometry
The mandarins were moved according to a custom scanning protocol, with the intention to simulate a conveyor belt setup. A wooden disk was attached on top of the rotation stage and six evenly spaced object positions were marked on the disk at a fixed distance from the center of rotation. Pieces of cardboard tube were used as sample holders to make sure the mandarins wouldn't roll as the disk would rotate and to raise them from the disk without attenuating too much of the X-ray signal. The rotation stage was positioned in such a way that over a full rotation of the disk, each mandarin would be completely in view of the detector for more than 180 degrees of the rotation, while there would also be a position at which it would be completely out of view. An image illustrating the exact dimensions is included in mandarin_carousel_dimensions.png.
The scan was performed in phases. Every phase 400 projection images were acquired, while rotating the disk for 60 degrees. This would rotate one of the positions out of view of the scanning setup. Before the first 6 phases a mandarin was added on the position that was out of view of the setup. For the phases after that the position that would be out of view would contain a mandarin that had rotated the full circle so that mandarin was replaced with a new mandarin. At the last 6 phases there would be no new mandarins left to add so the mandarin that was out of view of the setup would only be removed. The projection images acquired from each phase were concatenated resulting in a dataset of 11200 projections. At most 5 mandarins were in view at a given time.
Note: Due to a small oversight while scanning, the 19th mandarin is not included on projections 9200-9205. This area can be masked out during reconstruction.
Scanning settings
A peak voltage of 90kV was used, the target power was set to 49.5W and the spectrum was pre-filtered using 0.1mm of copper. An exposure time of 200 ms was used for each projection. A start-stop acquisition scheme was used to minimize vibrations and to make adding and removing mandarins easier: After each projection image was acquired, the stage was rotated to a new position and the scanner was paused for 200 ms before acquiring the next projection image. Darkfield and flatfield images were acquired before and after all the mandarins were scanned using the average over 200 images. 2x2 pixel hardware binning was used and all images were cropped to a 500 pixel high region around the center, resulting in 11200 projection images of 956x500 pixels (11.1GB uncompressed). All images are stored in .tif format.
Reconstructing volumes
The repository https://github.com/D1rk123/top-ct_experiments contains code for TOP-CT simulations and reconstructions. The script mandarin_carousel_experiment.py was specifically written to reconstruct volumes for each separate mandarin from this dataset.
 
Research groupThese datasets are produced by the Computational Imaging group at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CI-CWI) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands: https://www.cwi.nl/research/groups/computational-imaging
Contact detailsdirk [dot] schut [at] cwi [dot] nl
AcknowledgmentsThis work was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) through the UTOPIA project (ENWSS.2018.003). The authors also acknowledge TESCAN-XRE NV for their collaboration and support of the FleX-ray laboratory.
References
[Schut 2022] D. E. Schut, K. J. Batenburg, R. van Liere, and T. van Leeuwen, "TOP-CT: Trajectory with Overlapping Projections X-ray Computed Tomography", 2022, IEEE Transactions on Computational Imaging[Coban 2020] S. B. Coban, F. Lucka, W. J. Palenstijn, D. Van Loo, and K. J. Batenburg, "Explorative imaging and its implementation at the FleX-ray Laboratory," J. Imaging, vol. 6, no. 18, 2020, doi: 10.3390/jimaging6040018.
If you use (parts of) this data in a publication, please consider citing the first article.