COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY SCANNER APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR CT-BASED IMAGE ACQUISITION BASED ON SPATIALLY DISTRIBUTED X-RAY MICROSOURCES OF THE CONE-BEAM TYPE

摘要

The present invention refers to distributed X-ray source computed tomography (CT) based imaging systems and, more particularly, to a CT scanner apparatus and method for a CT-based image acquisition and 3D reconstruction using stationary, partly stationary or non-stationary source-detector setup geometries with at least one detector ring fixedly attached to a gantry (101) and a number of contiguous or partly contiguous radiator arrays (RA1, RA2, …, RAN ),each comprising a number of spatially distributed X-ray microsources (R, MS) of the cone-beam type, which may preferably be fabricated in carbon nanotube (CNT) technology, thus allowing higher sampling rates for an improved temporal resolution of acquired CT images as needed for an exact reconstruction of fast moving objects (such as e.g. the myocard) from a set of acquired projection data. Different arrangements of CNT-type radiator or source arrays (RA1, RA2, …, RAN ) and detector arrays (DA1, DA2, …, DAN ) as described with reference to exemplary embodiments of the present invention are proposed which, within improved sampling constraints as mentioned above, serve to enhance the spatial resolution of the reconstructed images by reducing artifacts that may result from missing or partial available image acquisition data.