Laser cone beam computed tomography scanner geometry for large volume 3D dosimetry

A new scanner geometry for fast optical cone-beam computed tomography is reported. The system consists of a low power laser beam, raster scanned, under computer control, through a transparent object in a refractive index matching aquarium. The transmitted beam is scattered from a diffuser screen and detected by a photomultiplier tube. Modest stray light is present in the projection images since only a single ray is present in the object during measurement and there is no imaging optics to introduce further stray light in the form of glare. A scan time of 30 minutes was required for 512 projections with a field of view of 12 x 18 cm. Initial performance from scanning a 15 cm diameter jar with black solutions is presented. Averaged reconstruction coefficients are within 2% along the height of the jar and within the central 85% of diameter, due to the index mismatch of the jar. Agreement with spectrometer measurements was better than 0.5% for a minimum transmission of 4% and within 4% for a dark, 0.1% transmission sample. This geometry's advantages include high dynamic range and low cost of scaling to larger (>15 cm) fields of view.