Explicit control of image noise and error properties in cone-beam microtomography using dual concentric circular source loci

Cone-beam reconstruction from projections with a circular source locus (relative to the specimen) is commonly used in X-ray microtomography systems. Although this method does not provide an “exact” reconstruction, since there is insufficient data in the projections, the approximation is considered adequate for many purposes. However, some specimens, with sharp changes in X-ray attenuation in the direction of the rotation axis, are particularly prone to cone-beam-related errors. These errors can be reduced by increasing the source-to-specimen distance, but at the expense of reduced signal-to-noise ratio or increased scanning time. An alternative method, based on heuristic arguments, is to scan the specimen with both short and long source-to-specimen distances and combine high frequency components from the former reconstruction with low frequency ones from the latter. This composite reconstruction has the low noise characteristics of the short source-to-specimen reconstruction and the low cone-beam errors of the long one. This has been tested with simulated data representing a particularly error prone specimen.