Image reconstruction in reduced circular sinusoidal cone-beam CT

Non-circular scanning geometries such as helix or circular sinusoid have been used or proposed for cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT), because they provide sufficient data for numerically stable and exact image reconstruction within the scanned volume. Analytic algorithms have been developed for image reconstruction from cone-beam data acquired with a full-scan circular sinusoidal trajectory. In this work, we propose an innovative imaging approach in which a reduced-scan circular sinusoidal trajectory is used for acquiring data sufficient for exact 3D image reconstruction. A filtered backprojection (FBP) algorithm based on Pack-Noo's reconstruction formula is applied for image reconstruction in reduced-scan circular sinusoidal scans. We have conducted numerical studies to demonstrate the reduced-scan approach and to validate the FBP reconstruction algorithm in the proposed approach. The proposed scanning method can contribute to increasing the throughput of a scanner, while improving the image quality compared to a conventional circular scan.