Axial Tomography and Three Dimensional Image Reconstruction

A number of existing cameras for Nuclear Medicine imaging of radio-isotope distributions give depth information about the distribution. These devices have in common that they provide tomographic images of the object, that is, that images of a given object plane have that plane in focus and all other object planes contribute an out-of-focus background superimposed on the in-focus image. We present here a method for three dimensional reconstruction of these axial tomographic images which removes the blurred off-plane activity from a number of transverse planes simultaneously. The method is applicable to a number of tomographic cameras, such as the multiple single-pinhole camera, the rotating slanted-hole collimator, the Anger focussing tomographic scanner, and the positron camera. The method can be implemented on a small computer having a disc system.