Collimator Effects in High Resolution X-Ray Computed Tomography

This paper complements other studies in the field of image restoration in X-ray computed tomography by including the source collimator among the sources of image degradation. The overall blur is describable in terms of a space variant 2-D impulse response or point spread function, which is initially calculated for an arbitrary scanning eccentricity, a uniform source intensity distribution, a uniform detector sensitivity, and arbitrary collimator aperture and position, and subsequently derived for more complicated sources and detectors. Numerous 3-D hidden-line displays are used throughout to illustrate the complicated 2-D functions emerging from the analysis.