Resolution-Independent Neural Operators for Multi-Rate Sparse-View CT

TL;DR

The paper introduces CTO, a neural operator framework for CT reconstruction that generalizes across different sampling rates and resolutions without retraining, outperforming CNNs and diffusion models in accuracy and speed.

Contribution

It proposes a novel resolution- and sampling-agnostic neural operator for CT reconstruction, extending to continuous function space with rotation-equivariant convolutions.

Findings

>4dB PSNR gain over CNNs across sampling rates

500× faster inference than diffusion models

Outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in accuracy and speed

Abstract

Sparse-view Computed Tomography (CT) reconstructs images from a limited number of X-ray projections to reduce radiation and scanning time, which makes reconstruction an ill-posed inverse problem. Deep learning methods achieve high-fidelity reconstructions but often overfit to a fixed acquisition setup, failing to generalize across sampling rates and image resolutions. For example, convolutional neural networks (CNNs) use the same learned kernels across resolutions, leading to artifacts when data resolution changes. We propose Computed Tomography neural Operator (CTO), a unified CT reconstruction framework that extends to continuous function space, enabling generalization (without retraining) across sampling rates and image resolutions. CTO operates jointly in the sinogram and image domains through rotation-equivariant Discrete-Continuous convolutions parametrized in the function space, making it inherently resolution- and sampling-agnostic. Empirically, CTO enables consistent multi-sampling-rate and cross-resolution performance, with on average >4dB PSNR gain over CNNs. Compared to state-of-the-art diffusion methods, CTO is 500$\times$ faster in inference time with on average 3dB gain. Empirical results also validate our design choices behind CTO's sinogram-space operator learning and rotation-equivariant convolution. Overall, CTO outperforms state-of-the-art baselines across sampling rates and resolutions, offering a scalable and generalizable solution that makes automated CT reconstruction more practical for deployment.