Parallel computing methods for x-ray cone beam tomography with large array sizes

Conference · Tue Dec 31 00:00:00 EST 1996

OSTI ID:513281

Reimann, D A ^[1]; Flynn, M J ^[2]; Sethi, I K ^[3]

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1. Albion College, MI (United States)
2. Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, MI (United States)
3. Wayne State Univ., Detroit, MI (United States); and others

Cone beam geometries are increasingly of interest for x-ray CT applications to improve imaging efficiency. In this paper, we describe our practical experience implementing circular orbit cone beam backprojection on workstation clusters. The reconstruction problem is computationally intensive, particularly for arrays of 512 voxels; in each direction. A voxel driven approach is described where the reconstruction volume is partitioned into variable width slabs and each slab given to a workstation. Each projection is filtered by one workstation and then sent to the others for backprojection. While most computation is done in the backprojection step, a significant amount of time must be spent in sending projectional data. A method is detailed to further reduce the communication overhead by restricting the amount of projection sent to only what is required by each backprojecting workstation. Furthermore, if the shape of the backprojection slabs is made as square as possible, the total communication requirement can be minimized. By the reduction of communication requirement, an overall improvement in processor utilization was observed, and the crossover point where communications dominates was improved.

• OSTI ID: 513281
• Report Number(s): CONF-961123-; CNN: Grant R01-AR42101; TRN: 97:014334
• Resource Relation: Conference: Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) nuclear science symposium and medical imaging conference, Anaheim, CA (United States), 2-9 Nov 1996; Other Information: PBD: 1996; Related Information: Is Part Of 1996 IEEE nuclear science symposium - conference record. Volumes 1, 2 and 3; Del Guerra, A. [ed.]; PB: 2138 p.
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

44 INSTRUMENTATION
INCLUDING NUCLEAR AND PARTICLE DETECTORS
55 BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE
BASIC STUDIES
99 MATHEMATICS
COMPUTERS
INFORMATION SCIENCE
MANAGEMENT
LAW
MISCELLANEOUS
PHOTON COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY
PARALLEL PROCESSING
X-RAY RADIOGRAPHY
IMAGE PROCESSING
PROJECTION OPERATORS
THREE-DIMENSIONAL CALCULATIONS