A general approach to the reconstruction of x-ray helical computed tomography

Helical Computed Tomography (HCT) has become the method of choice for many routine clinical studies. The advantages of HCT include the capability of scanning a complete anatomical volume in a single breath hold, the capability of generating images at any desired location, and the improved patient throughput. However, these advantages come at the expense of some image quality compromises. This is mainly caused by the fact that the projection set is inherently incomplete and inconsistent, due to the constant patient translation during the data acquisition process. In this paper, we will briefly review the research work performed in this area and present a more general approach to the problem. We give two specific examples of the general approach and compare the performance of one of the examples with one of the best methods available today. (C) 1996 American Association of physicists in Medicine.