Exact reconstruction for cone-beam scanning along nonstandard spirals and other curves

In this article we consider cone-beam CT projections along a nonstandard 3-D spiral with variable radius and variable pitch. Specifically, we generalize an exact image reconstruction formula by Zou and Pan (2004a) and (2004b) to the case of nonstandard spirals, by giving a new, analytic proof of the reconstruction formula. Our proof is independent of the shape of the spiral, as long as the object is contained in a region inside the spiral, where there is a PI line passing through any interior point. Our generalized reconstruction formula can also be applied to much more general situations, including cone-beam scanning along standard (Pack, et al. 2004) and nonstandard saddle curves, and any smooth curve from one endpoint of a line segment to the other endpoint, for image reconstruction of that line segment. In other words, our results can be regarded as a generalization of Orlov's classical papers (1975) to cone-beam scanning.