SPICE-CT Package for Computed Tomography QC

Author: John Loveland (john.loveland at nhs.net)
History: 2014/05/10: First release
Source: In SPICE_CT.jar
Installation: Drag and drop SPICE_CT.jar onto the "ImageJ" window or download and install it using the Plugins>Install command.
Description: This plugin suite adds a Plugins>SPICE-CT sub-menu to ImageJ.

Please note that the help plugin contains important information about the acquisition of the images for analysis. To view the help files you will need to enable the activeX components in the browser window that pops up.

The SPICE-CT suite includes the following plugins:

  • AEC curves - outputs useful DICOM tags from stacks of CT images, if a user drawn r.o.i is present the mean and standard deviation from this region are also provided.
  • Auto bead recognition - Experimental plugin that splits a stack of images into two: one containing images with a CATPHAN MTF bead present and one containing all other images. (Work in progress)
  • Average DICOM stack - Averages a DICOM stack and applies the DICOM header of the first image to the averaged image.
  • CT nos. and imaged thickness - performs measurements of CT numbers and slice thicknesses in CATPHAN images of the appropriate module
  • Focus collimator alignment - performs a focus collimator alignment check on a scanned film, CR cassette, or gafchromic image.
  • FWHM from ROI - returns the FWHM measurement from a user specified rectangular r.o.i.
  • Gantry angle - Estimates the CT gantry angle from an angled acquisition through the centre of the CATPHAN phantom
  • Geometry and alignment - Checks the geometry and alignment in images of the appropriate CATPHAN module
  • Helical z sensitivity - measures slice thickness and profile in spiral acquisitions of a single CATPHAN bead
  • SPICE-CT Help - starts a browser window with the SPICE-CT documentation
  • Interslice noise - measures the noise and uncertainty in noise for each detector of a CT scanners
  • Irradiated thickness - measures the axial irradiated slice thickness from scanned film, CR cassette or gafchromic images
  • MTF - measures MTF and outputs MTF50 and MTF10
  • Noise and Uniformity - measures CT noise and uniformity as specified in IPEM report 32 part iii
  • Remove slices from stack - Useful tool to remove images from a stack based on either the value of a particular DICOM tag or simply the slice number in the stack
  • Sort plugin - Automatically sorts all images in a specified directory into the different modules in the CATPHAN phantom (acquistions must be performed according to the instructions in the Help plugin for this to work properly)
SPICE-CT is provided for free use so long as it is referenced as "Loveland, J. (2011). SPICE-CT [computer software]. Edinburgh". It is provided as is and the author provides no warranties as to its fitness or performance. Use at your own risk. Under no circumstances is the author liable for any result of using this software or failing to use this software. If you have any comments or suggestions for improvements please send them to john.loveland@nhs.net.