A box spline calculus for the discretization of computed tomography reconstruction problems

IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 2012 Aug;31(8):1532-41. doi: 10.1109/TMI.2012.2191417. Epub 2012 Mar 20.

Abstract

B-splines are attractive basis functions for the continuous-domain representation of biomedical images and volumes. In this paper, we prove that the extended family of box splines are closed under the Radon transform and derive explicit formulae for their transforms. Our results are general; they cover all known brands of compactly-supported box splines (tensor-product B-splines, separable or not) in any number of dimensions. The proposed box spline approach extends to non-Cartesian lattices used for discretizing the image space. In particular, we prove that the 2-D Radon transform of an N-direction box spline is generally a (nonuniform) polynomial spline of degree N-1. The proposed framework allows for a proper discretization of a variety of tomographic reconstruction problems in a box spline basis. It is of relevance for imaging modalities such as X-ray computed tomography and cryo-electron microscopy. We provide experimental results that demonstrate the practical advantages of the box spline formulation for improving the quality and efficiency of tomographic reconstruction algorithms.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Heart / diagnostic imaging
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Lung / diagnostic imaging
  • Phantoms, Imaging
  • Radiography
  • Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted*
  • Tomography / methods*