Tilted cone beam VCT reconstruction algorithm

Abstract

Reconstruction algorithms for volumetric CT have been the focus of many studies. Several exact and approximate reconstruction algorithms have been proposed for step-and-shoot and helical scanning trajectories to combat cone beam related artifacts. In this paper, we present a closed form cone beam reconstruction formula for tilted gantry data acquisition. Although several algorithms were proposed to compensate for errors induced by the gantry tilt, none of the algorithms addresses the case in which the cone beam geometry is first rebinned to a set of parallel beams prior to the filtered backprojection. Because of the rebinning process, the amount of iso-center adjustment depends not only on the projection angle and tilt angle, but also on the reconstructed pixel location. The proposed algorithm has been tested extensively on both 16 and 64 slice VCT with phantoms and clinical data. The efficacy of the algorithm is clearly demonstrated by the experiments.