A Feasibility Study of Digital Tomosynthesis System Using a Moving Carbon Nanotube Array

Digital tomosynthesis is an imaging modality that provides quasi-three-dimensional images of anatomy by acquiring a limited number of projections at finite source positions. An effective data sampling scheme in a compact digital tomosynthesis system is an active research area. This study presented a prototype digital tomosynthesis system using a moving carbon nanotube array and its tailored reconstruction algorithm. Our tomosynthesis system was configured with a fixed detector and a source array that consists of seven carbon nanotube-based X-ray sources. The system acquired projection data at different source positions by moving the source array. To handle data truncation and non-ideal source problems, we adopted a weighted data fidelity scheme for image reconstruction. The weighting functions were achieved from pre-shot data of uniform PMMA phantom. We also exploit the directional total variation minimization technique to produce better image quality. The combined object function was iteratively minimized by using the Chambolle-Pock algorithm. Physical hand and ankle phantoms were scanned to test the proposed system and reconstruction algorithms. Reconstruction results successfully demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed system.