CONE BEAM RECONSTRUCTION USING HELICAL DATA COLLECTION PATHS

Radiation passing through a cone beam collimator is received by a radiation detector (10) such as a gamma camera head, as the gamma camera head is moved in a helical orbit. Data g(n,u,v) collected during the helical orbit is scaled (42) to scaled data G(n,u,v). A first partial derivative .differential.G (n,u,v)/.differential.u is taken (46u) with respect to a horizontal direction and a second partial derivative .differential.G (n,u,v)/.differential.v is taken (46v) with respect to a vertical direction. The partial derivatives are linearly combined (48) by being multiplied by sine and cosine values of an angle .alpha. between the horizontal direction u and an arbitrary direction p in the detector plane to form partial derivatives .differential.G(n,u,v)/.differential.p. The coordinate system of the derivatives is converted (60) from the (n,u,v) coordinate system to an (n,.alpha.,p) coordinate system. The first derivatives are projected (62) i.e. summed row by row, onto a q axis which is perpendicular to the p arbitrary direction. The one-dimensional projection arrays are rebinned (70) to form first derivative Radon domain data R'(.theta.,.rho.). A second derivative R" (.theta.,.rho.) is taken (74) of the Radon domain data. The second derivative Radon domain data is backprojected (80) into an image memory (82) and displayed on a video monitor (84).