Computation of a Consistent System Matrix for Cone-beam Computed Tomography

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new method for computing a consistent system matrix in cone-beam CT that improves reconstruction quality and is computationally efficient, supported by theoretical derivations and practical CUDA implementation.

Contribution

The paper presents an exact formula-based approach for system matrix computation in cone-beam CT, avoiding iterative routines and enhancing reconstruction accuracy.

Findings

Reconstructed images are superior with the proposed system matrix.

The method is computationally efficient due to exact formulae.

CUDA implementation enables practical application.

Abstract

We propose a method for the computation of a consistent system matrix for two- and three-dimensional cone-beam computed tomography (CT). The method relies on the decomposition of the cone-voxel intersection volumes into subvolumes that contribute to distinct detector elements and whose contributions to the system matrix admit exact formulae that can be evaluated without the invocation of costly iterative subroutines. We demonstrate that the reconstructions obtained when using the proposed system matrix are superior to those obtained when using common line-based integration approaches with numerical experiments on synthetic and real CT data. Moreover, we provide a CUDA implementation of the proposed method.