A comparison of 3D cone-beam Computed Tomography (CT) image reconstruction performance on homogeneous multi-core processor and on other processors

Computed Tomography (CT) has become an important noninvasive tool in diagnostic medicine. In fact, the use of cone-beam CT is growing in the clinical area due to its ability to provide 3D volumetric information. This study aims to parallelize an analytical 3D image reconstruction algorithm and then implement it on a commercial homogeneous multi-core processor. It is indicated from our results that the homogeneous multi-core processor actually achieved faster reconstruction than the heterogeneous processor-based or the FPGA-based implementation. Our results demonstrated that the shared cache mechanism associated with the homogeneous processor would represent a significant benefit to performing high-speed CT reconstruction or other High Performance Computing (HPC) applications. In addition, while the Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) is considered the most powerful processor nowadays, our experimental results further indicated that the joint use of the multi-core CPU and GPU could enhance the processing power as well as improve the computational efficiency.

► Reconstruction speed (in ascending order): Cell, FPGA, Core i7, GPU, Core i7 + GPU.
► The shared cache of homogeneous multi-core CPU would represent a significant benefit.
► A joint use of homogeneous multi-core CPU and GPU could enhance the processing power.