Iterative 3-D reconstruction of vascular images from a few views: Phantom study results

Iterative 3-d reconstruction of images from a few projections for application in Digital Subtraction Angiography of cerebral blood vessels is investigated. The method reconstructs a 3-d vascular network in a series of 2-d sections by filtered back-projection and summation of the projections followed by non-linear iterative deconvolution of the filtered-summated image. The reconstruction method is tested on a 3-d wire phantom resembling vasculature. Four to eight projections are used as input, where each projection is separated by rotation and is assumed to represent a projected stack of mutually parallel axial sections. The results show that given at least 4 projections there is sufficient detail in the reconstructed phantom to determine the location of major structures