GPU-accelerated iterative reconstruction from Compton scattered data using a matched pair of conic projector and backprojector.
OBJECTIVE
Iterative reconstruction from Compton scattered data is known to be computationally more challenging than that from conventional line-projection based emission data in that the gamma rays that undergo Compton scattering are modeled as conic projections rather than line projections. In conventional tomographic reconstruction, to parallelize the projection and backprojection operations using the graphics processing unit (GPU), approximated methods that use an unmatched pair of ray-tracing forward projector and voxel-driven backprojector have been widely used. In this work, we propose a new GPU-accelerated method for Compton camera reconstruction which is more accurate by using exactly matched pair of projector and backprojector.


METHODS
To calculate conic forward projection, we first sample the cone surface into conic rays and accumulate the intersecting chord lengths of the conic rays passing through voxels using a fast ray-tracing method (RTM). For conic backprojection, to obtain the true adjoint of the conic forward projection, while retaining the computational efficiency of the GPU, we use a voxel-driven RTM which is essentially the same as the standard RTM used for the conic forward projector.


RESULTS
Our simulation results show that, while the new method is about 3 times slower than the approximated method, it is still about 16 times faster than the CPU-based method without any loss of accuracy.


CONCLUSIONS
The net conclusion is that our proposed method is guaranteed to retain the reconstruction accuracy regardless of the number of iterations by providing a perfectly matched projector-backprojector pair, which makes iterative reconstruction methods for Compton imaging faster and more accurate.
Department of Information Systems, Le Quy Don Technical University, 236 Hoang Quoc Viet Street, Bac Tu Liem District, Hanoi 10000, Viet Nam.
Van-Giang
VG
Nguyen
Department of Electronic Engineering, Paichai University, 155-40 Baejae-Ro, Doma-Dong, Seo-Gu, Daejeon 35345, Republic of Korea. Electronic address: sjlee@pcu.ac.kr.
Soo-Jin
SJ
Lee
D003196:Computer Graphics; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D008855:Microscopy, Electron, Scanning; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D012542:Scattering, Radiation
Compton camera; GPU-accelerated reconstruction; Iterative reconstruction; Projector and backprojector; Ray-tracing method