title: CONRAD--a software framework for cone-beam imaging in radiology.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  In the community of x-ray imaging, there is a multitude of tools and applications that are used in scientific practice. Many of these tools are proprietary and can only be used within a certain lab. Often the same algorithm is implemented multiple times by different groups in order to enable comparison. In an effort to tackle this problem, the authors created CONRAD, a software framework that provides many of the tools that are required to simulate basic processes in x-ray imaging and perform image reconstruction with consideration of nonlinear physical effects.
  
  
  METHODS
  CONRAD is a Java-based state-of-the-art software platform with extensive documentation. It is based on platform-independent technologies. Special libraries offer access to hardware acceleration such as OpenCL. There is an easy-to-use interface for parallel processing. The software package includes different simulation tools that are able to generate up to 4D projection and volume data and respective vector motion fields. Well known reconstruction algorithms such as FBP, DBP, and ART are included. All algorithms in the package are referenced to a scientific source.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A total of 13 different phantoms and 30 processing steps have already been integrated into the platform at the time of writing. The platform comprises 74.000 nonblank lines of code out of which 19% are used for documentation. The software package is available for download at http://conrad.stanford.edu. To demonstrate the use of the package, the authors reconstructed images from two different scanners, a table top system and a clinical C-arm system. Runtimes were evaluated using the RabbitCT platform and demonstrate state-of-the-art runtimes with 2.5 s for the 256 problem size and 12.4 s for the 512 problem size.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  As a common software framework, CONRAD enables the medical physics community to share algorithms and develop new ideas. In particular this offers new opportunities for scientific collaboration and quantitative performance comparison between the methods of different groups.
authors: Department of Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305.
authors: Andreas
authors: A
authors: Maier
authors: Hannes G
authors: HG
authors: Hofmann
authors: Martin
authors: M
authors: Berger
authors: Peter
authors: P
authors: Fischer
authors: Chris
authors: C
authors: Schwemmer
authors: Haibo
authors: H
authors: Wu
authors: Kerstin
authors: K
authors: Müller
authors: Joachim
authors: J
authors: Hornegger
authors: Jang-Hwan
authors: JH
authors: Choi
authors: Christian
authors: C
authors: Riess
authors: Andreas
authors: A
authors: Keil
authors: Rebecca
authors: R
authors: Fahrig
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D003196:Computer Graphics; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003201:Computers; D054893:Cone-Beam Computed Tomography; D004867:Equipment Design; D056973:Four-Dimensional Computed Tomography; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D009038:Motion; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D011381:Programming Languages; D011857:Radiographic Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D012984:Software; D014584:User-Computer Interface