Purpose: We demonstrate a super resolved and radiation does-preserving imaging-like concept for computerized tomography (CT) yielding 3-D super resolved images.
Materials and Methods: The imaging-like concept includes an x-ray beam-shaped source that is irradiating the patient without any collimators array. Then, time or space varying encoding obtained via varying (in time or in space) array of pinholes is positioned in front of the x-ray detector to perform high-resolution 3-D imaging of the inspected patient. The reconstruction includes applying a modified mathematical Radon transformation and proper data decoding done in the spatial Fourier domain. It also includes sub-pixels replications of the imaged object which after proper post processing allows preserving the same image quality in sense of SNR and CNR and yet significantly improving the imaging resolution. All those improvements are obtained for 3-D information extraction.
Results: The proposed imaging-based CT system was physically modeled and simulated via Geant4 software where a resolution improvement was demonstrated while preserving the same SNR and CNR. In addition to that, an experimental prototype was constructed, and the super resolving capability was experimentally demonstrated.
Conclusion: A novel concept to do resolution enhanced CT scans is presented. The concept includes x-ray source beam-shaping and using time or space encoding realized via a variable array of holes. The proposed concept was validated numerically and experimentally and has demonstrated the capability of improving the 3D resolution while preserving the same radiation dose and the same level of SNR and CNR in the image capturing process which is highly applicable for CT scans in radiology.
Keywords: Computerized tomography, x-ray imaging, super resolution, SNR, CNR
