A very fast iterative algorithm for TV-regularized image reconstruction with applications to low-dose and few-view CT

This paper concerns iterative reconstruction for low-dose and few-view CT by minimizing a data-fidelity term regularized with the Total Variation (TV) penalty. We propose a very fast iterative algorithm to solve this problem. The algorithm derivation is outlined as follows. First, the original minimization problem is reformulated into the saddle point (primal-dual) problem by using the Lagrangian duality, to which we apply the first-order primal-dual iterative methods. Second, we precondition the iteration formula using the ramp flter of Filtered Backprojection (FBP) reconstruction algorithm in such a way that the problem solution is not altered. The resulting algorithm resembles the structure of so-called iterative FBP algorithm, and it converges to the exact minimizer of cost function very fast.

Proposal of fault-tolerant tomographic image reconstruction

This paper deals with tomographic image reconstruction under the situation where some of projection data bins are contaminated with abnormal data. Such situations occur in various instances of tomography. We propose a new reconstruction algorithm called the Fault-Tolerant reconstruction outlined as follows. The least-squares (L2-norm) error function ||Ax-b||_2^2 used in ordinary iterative reconstructions is sensitive to the existence of abnormal data. The proposed algorithm utilizes the L1-norm error function ||Ax-b||_1^1 instead of the L2-norm, and we develop a row-action-type iterative algorithm using the proximal splitting framework in convex optimization fields. We also propose an improved version of the L1-norm reconstruction called the L1-TV reconstruction, in which a weak Total Variation (TV) penalty is added to the cost function. Simulation results demonstrate that reconstructed images with the L2-norm were severely damaged by the effect of abnormal bins, whereas images with the L1-norm and L1-TV reconstructions were robust to the existence of abnormal bins.