Single-slice rebinning reconstruction in spiral cone-beam computed tomography

At the advent of multislice computed tomography (CT) a variety of approximate cone-beam algorithms have been proposed suited for reconstruction of small cone-angle CT data in a spiral mode of operation. The goal of this study is to identify a practical and efficient approximate cone-beam method, extend its potential for medical use, and demonstrate its performance at medium cone-angles required for area detector CT. The authors investigate two different approximate single-slice rebinning algorithms for cone-beam CT: the multirow Fourier reconstruction (MFR) and an extension of the advanced single-slice rebinning method (ASSR), which combines the idea of ASSR with a z-filtering approach. Thus, both algorithms, MFR and ASSR, are formulated in the framework of z-filtering using optimized spiral interpolation algorithms. In each view, X-ray samples to be used for reconstruction are identified, which describe an approximation to a virtual reconstruction plane. The performance of approximate reconstruction should improve as the virtual reconstruction plane better fits the spiral focus path. The image quality of the respective reconstruction is assessed with respect to image artifacts, spatial resolution, contrast resolution, and image noise. It turns out that the ASSR method using tilted reconstruction planes is a practical and efficient algorithm, providing image quality comparable to that of a single-row scanning system even with a 46-row detector at a table feed of 64 mm. Both algorithms tolerate any table feed below the maximum value associated to the detector height. Due to the z-filter approach, all detector data sampled can be used for image reconstruction.