On the crucial impact of the coupling projector-backprojector in iterative tomographic reconstruction
This addresses a previously overlooked aspect in X-ray tomography reconstruction, potentially improving iterative algorithms for medical or industrial imaging, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing projector design efforts.
The study investigates how the matching between forward and backprojector implementations affects iterative tomographic reconstruction, finding that this coupling significantly impacts reconstruction quality and convergence, often more than other factors like operator accuracy or constraints.
The performance of an iterative reconstruction algorithm for X-ray tomography is strongly determined by the features of the used forward and backprojector. For this reason, a large number of studies has focused on the to design of projectors with increasingly higher accuracy and speed. To what extent the accuracy of an iterative algorithm is affected by the mathematical affinity and the similarity between the actual implementation of the forward and backprojection, referred here as "coupling projector-backprojector", has been an overlooked aspect so far. The experimental study presented here shows that the reconstruction quality and the convergence of an iterative algorithm greatly rely on a good matching between the implementation of the tomographic operators. In comparison, other aspects like the accuracy of the standalone operators, the usage of physical constraints or the choice of stopping criteria may even play a less relevant role.