Affiliations: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA | Department of Engineering Physics, Tsinghua
University, Beijing, China | Xradia Inc., Pleasanton, CA, USA | Biomedical Imaging Division, VT-WFU School of
Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, Wake Forest University Health Sciences,
Winston-Salem, NC, USA | Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA | Biomedical Imaging Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute, Troy, NY, USA
Note: [] Corresponding author: Ge Wang, PhD, Clark and Crossan Chair
Professor, Director of Biomedical Imaging Center, Room 3209, CBIS/BME, RPI,
Troy, New York 12180, USA. Tel.: +1 518 698 2500; Fax: +1 518 276 3035; E-mail:
ge-wang@ieee.org
Abstract: High-resolution micro-CT offers 3D non-destructive imaging but scan
times are prohibitively large in many cases. Advancements in image
reconstruction offer great reduction in number of views while maintaining
reconstruction accuracy; yet filtered back projection remains the de facto
standard. An extensive study of few-view reconstruction using
compressed-sensing based iterative techniques is carried out. Also, a novel 3D
micro-CT phantom is proposed, and used for analyzing reconstruction accuracy.
Numerical tests, and studies on real micro-CT data show that if measurement
noise in projections is not extremely high, the number of views may be reduced
to 1/8^{th} of the typically acquired view numbers. The
study motivates the adoption of advanced reconstruction techniques to allow
faster scanning, lower dosage, and reduced data size in high-resolution
micro-CT.
Keywords: Few-view reconstruction, micro-CT, compressed sensing, TV minimization, SART-TV
