Sparse-view reconstruction from restored low-dose CT projections

To further alleviate the ionizing radiation damage of computed tomography (CT), we propose a method of sparse-view reconstruction based on low-dose CT projection data. It first utilizes a penalized weighted least square (PWLS) restoration for low-dose CT projection based on noise modeling. Then the CT images are reconstructed from fewer views of denoised projection data. Reconstruction results from a simulation experiment with a Shepp-Logan phantom and real experiment data indicate that the proposed method can obtain relatively good reconstructed images from low-dose sparse-view projection data, as well as effective suppression of noise and streak artifacts in reconstructed images.