EKG-gated Low-dose Chest CT Imaging

Majority of the CT cardiac scans is performed with EKG-gated low-pitch helical. Many of the procedures are accompanied by the examination of the lungs for pulmonary emboli or atypical masses. Because of the EKG-based gating and the half-scan algorithm used in the cardiac reconstruction, the lung portion of the image exhibits low spatial resolution and high level of noise. In this paper, we present a new reconstruction algorithm that takes full advantage of the low-pitch helical and the x-ray tube current modulation to significantly improve the spatial resolution and noise performance.