Fast exact/quasi-exact FBP algorithms for triple-source helical cone-beam CT.

Cardiac computed tomography (CT) has been improved over past years, but it still needs improvement for higher temporal resolution in the cases of high or irregular cardiac rates. Given successful applications of dual-source cardiac CT scanners, triple-source cone-beam CT seems a promising mode for cardiac CT. In this paper, we propose two filtered-backprojection algorithms for triple-source helical cone-beam CT. The first algorithm utilizes two families of filtering lines. These lines are parallel to the tangent of the scanning trajectory and the so-called L lines. The second algorithm utilizes two families of filtering lines tangent to the boundaries of the Zhao window and L lines, respectively, but it eliminates the filtering paths along the tangent of the scanning trajectory, thus reducing the required detector size greatly. The first algorithm is theoretically exact for r < 0.265R and quasi-exact for 0.265R <or= r < 0.495R, and the second algorithm is quasi-exact for r < 0.495R , where r and R denote the object radius and the trajectory radius, respectively. Both algorithms are computationally efficient. Numerical results are presented to verify and showcase the proposed algorithms.