Impacts of photon counting CT to maximum intensity projection (MIP) images of cerebral CT angiography: theoretical and experimental studies.

While CTA is an established clinical gold standard for imaging large cerebral arteries and veins, an important challenge that currently remains for CTA is its limited performance in imaging small perforating arteries with diameters below 0.5 mm. The purpose of this work was to theoretically and experimentally study the potential benefits of using photon counting detector (PCD)-based CT (PCCT) to improve the performance of CTA in imaging these small arteries.