Exact iterative reconstruction for the interior problem.

There is a trend in single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) that small and dedicated imaging systems are becoming popular. For example, many companies are developing small dedicated cardiac SPECT systems with different designs. These dedicated systems have a smaller field of view (FOV) than a full-size clinical system. Thus data truncation has become the norm rather than the exception in these systems. Therefore, it is important to develop region of interest (ROI) reconstruction algorithms using truncated data. This paper is a stepping stone toward this direction. This paper shows that the common generic iterative image reconstruction algorithms are able to exactly reconstruct the ROI under the conditions that the convex ROI is fully sampled and the image value in a sub-region within the ROI is known. If the ROI includes a sub-region that is outside the patient body, then the conditions can be easily satisfied.