Interactive reconstruction in single-photon tomography.

A new method is described to allow interactive selection of the reconstruction filter at the time of interpretation of images from single-photon tomography. In the filtered back projection algorithm, the only part of the reconstruction process requiring user interaction is the selection of the window function. Since the ramp and window filters have different purposes, they can be separated, placing the window at the end of the reconstruction process as a three-dimensional filter. All stages of reconstruction except the window filtering are performed before the physician begins to interpret the study. The three-dimensional filtering is performed very rapidly with use of the Chebyshev convolution algorithm. A 64 x 64 x 64 pixel cube of data is filtered in 13-33 s using filters of 3-11 lengths. Smaller volumes of image data can be filtered in less than 1 s; thus, the user can interactively choose any desired filter for a given tomographic study at the time of interpretation of the images.