A simple and low cost USB webcam-driven optical tomography system suitable for teaching x-ray computed tomography

A simple and cheap optical analog computed tomography (CT) system, useful for teaching x-ray CT for physics, medical physics and engineering physics students without applying ionizing radiation is presented. White spectrum of a light emitting diode (LED) source was characterized by using an in-house constructed spectrophotometer. A simple electronic hardware, utilizing a synchronization of an universal serial bus webcam and direct current (DC) motor was developed in such a way that, a single click on the record video button of the webcam software is enough to run the tomograph. Finally, the two- and three-dimensional tomography reconstructions are briefly discussed and presented. (paper)