Adaptive projection selection for computed tomography.

The number of projections is a critical factor in tomographic imaging. The larger the number, the better the quality of the reconstructed image; however, it increases the radiation dose delivered to the patient. Therefore, it is important to keep the number of projections as small as possible. Traditionally, the projections are taken by moving the x-ray source around the patient at uniform angular steps. Taking projections at nonuniform steps may result in better images as compared with that obtained using uniform projections. This paper describes two different approaches that adjust the step size to adaptively select the angle of projections. The first one is based on the spectral richness of the acquired projections and the second relies on the amount of new information added by successive projections. The superior performance of the two proposed methods over the uniform projection scheme is demonstrated through simulation results using both phantom and real images.