IMAGE GENERATION FROM LIMITED PROJECTIONS IN POSITRON EMISSION TOMOGRAPHY USING MULTI-SLICE REBINNING

A method of reconstructing an image in a medical imaging system comprises the steps of detecting transverse rays and oblique rays using a limited range of projection angles. The limited range of projection angles is achieved by either limiting the range of rotation of the detectors at each position along the z axis, or by causing the detectors to trace a continuous-motion helical path along the z axis. Data is then rebinned to create a stack of partially-complete sinograms corresponding to individual transverse slice images corresponding to, in the aggregate, a three-dimensional image. Because of the limited projection angles, each sinogram represents an incomplete data set. The rebinning includes, for each oblique ray, identifying among the sinograms the images intersected by the ray, and, applying to each of the sinograms associated with the images intersected by the ray an increment that is representative of the ray. A two-dimensional iterative reconstruction algorithm is applied to each partial sinogram in order to reconstruct a three-dimensional image slice-by-slice, followed or preceded by axially filtering to reduce blurring in the z direction.