1. OEM X-Ray Products and Components
  2. CERA – Software for High-quality CT Imaging

Image Processing with CERA

Technology Excellence in Imaging Solutions

Our Mission

Over the last decade, Siemens Healthineers developed CERA as a powerful toolbox consisting of building blocks for high performance 3D X-ray imaging across various imaging markets. The ability to combine knowledge from diverse application fields is keeping us in a unique position to generate and implement innovations that help you to augment your specific solutions.

Regular upgrades add exciting new features to CERA, which is designed to support your imaging needs with the following strategies in mind: Customization and Differentiation, Workflow Automation, Quality and Efficiency.

CERA functional scope

While 3D X-ray imaging applications are very specialized for their use case, they can be based on a set of common underlying technologies.

The functionality of CERA targets these common technologies by delivering algorithms and functions to be used in a variety of imaging markets. CERA thus offers the chance to leverage synergies between otherwise separated communities, applications, and markets.

Geometry Alignment
Geometry Alignment
  • Phantom-based geometry computation
  • Automatic geometry alignment
3D Image Reconstruction
3D Image Reconstruction
  • Outstanding standard Feldkamp algorithm implementation
  • Special reconstruction techniques
  • Cone-beam artifact-free reconstructions
Image Quality Improvement
Image Quality Improvement
  • Physical artifact reduction (beam hardening, scatter, etc.)
  • Ring artifact reduction, bad pixel correction
  • Intelligent noise reduction
3D Volume Visualization
3D Volume Visualization
  • Fluent visualization of huge volumes
  • Cinematic rendering

Licensing Landscape

Configurable to specific needs.

Click on the "+" signs for more information:

    Portfolio

    NDT Applications
    Applications in Electronics
    Dental Imaging
    cera portfolio - ndt applications

    NDT Applications

    Typical applications in NDT comprise dimensional measurement or material testing during the manufacturing cycle of various products. 3D NDT X-ray imaging often has high demands on resolution and geometric precision and often involves very large amounts of data. CERA nicely supports those requirements.
    • Application-specific Trajectories
    • Phantom-based Alignment
    • Cone-beam Artifact Free Reconstruction
    • Field-of-view Enlargements
    • Beam Hardening Reduction
    • Scatter Reduction
    • Tera Voxel Renderer
    • Benchmarks
      •
    Find more details here:
    cera portfolio - applications in electronics

    Applications in Electronics

    Electronic testing typically deals with objects of anisotropic form factors, such as printed circuit boards, oftentimes with a specific interest in only certain regions distributed over that object. The small structures of interest demand high geometric magnifications during the scan.

    In addition, fast workflows are required in in-line applications. These requirements are often addressed with linear or circular tomosynthesis scans with a reduced number of projections. CERA's dedicated analytic and iterative algorithms provide high image quality in these scenarios. Geometric jitter caused by fast movement of manipulators and amplified by high geometric magnification is reduced by CERA's automatic jitter compensation. Visual assessment is enhanced with cutting-edge visualization techniques.
    • Jitter Compensation.
    • Iterative Reconstruction
    • Cinematic Rendering
    • Speed-up Methods
    Find more details here:
    cera portfolio - dental imaging

    Dental Imaging

    Digital volume tomography has become a standard application in dental imaging. Good algorithmic processing allows to create very compact and cost-efficient designs for highly specialized devices for imaging the human head. Typical challenges are detectors that do not cover the patient's entire head, limitations in the system mechanics, patient motion, and metallic dental fillings. This chapter presents the solutions CERA delivers for those challenges.
    • (Super) Short-scan Reconstruction
    • Half-beam Reconstruction
    • Noise reduction
    • Patient Motion Compensation
    • Metal Artifact Reduction
      •
    Find more details here:

    How to use CERA

    How to use cera

    From out-of-the-box to deep integration: customizable for any needs

    In order to be used, CERA requires a Windows 10 system with an Nvidia Graphics Adapter. To achieve high performance, an SSD is recommended for fast I/O. CPU performance, on the other hand, has no significant influence on CERA's processing speed. CERA can be accessed in a seamless range of depths of integration starting from a comfortable GUI up to an extremely fine-grained API integration. The chosen depth of integration can vary throughout the implementation, utilizing:

    • CERA XPlorer, an intuitive front-end application, offering an easy entry point and allowing fast prototyping.
    • Ready-to-use examples for most CERA features that come as pre-compiled programs and as C++ source code.
    • An easy-to-do high-level C-API integration, based on text-based configuration files that separate source code from feature and system configurations.
    • The low-level C-API allowing fine-grained control of all CERA features for a completely customizable workflow.

    CERA XPlorer 

    The CERA XPlorer is an intuitive and efficient frontend to explore most CERA features. It can be used for rapid prototyping and also as an end-customer application. CERA XPlorer's functionality can be extended by executing customized command-line tools directly from its GUI. These can be the ready-to-use CERA examples or customer-created tools. This allows automatic, task-specific workflows to be created easily.

    Main Benefits

    Main benefits
    CERA delivers software building blocks enabling fast development of cutting-edge tomographic X-ray imaging devices. The access to high-end CERA algorithms allows our partners to focus their R&D on the specific requirements of their application.
    • Benefit from a long-time stable programming interface that decouples your software from the fast life-cycle of underlying computer hardware
    • Utilize the performance benefits of GPUs without extra implementation efforts
    • Gain access to innovation and technologies from other X-ray imaging markets where solutions for your questions may have already been found
    • Benefit from direct expert-only support automatically included in a commercial license

    On account of certain regional limitations of sales rights and service availability, we cannot guarantee that all solutions and services included in this brochure are available through the Siemens sales organization worldwide.

    The information in this document contains general technical descriptions of specifications and options as well as standard and optional features which do not always have to be present in individual cases.

    These components and configurations are neither finished medical devices nor finished devices for the industrial sector.

    Compliance with all laws and regulations that are applicable to finished medical devices or industrial devices are in the responsibility of the assembler/manufacturer of the finished device.

    Note: Any technical data contained in this document may vary within defined tolerances. Original images always lose a certain amount of detail when reproduced.