High Speed Convolving Kernels for CT Having Triangular Spectra and/or Binary Values

An algorithm is described to transform sampled CT convolution kernels into "binary" kernels having values which are even powers of 2. Multiplication in the convolution operation can then be replaced by a much faster shift operation. A technique for further reducing the number of shift and addition operations using new computationally fast CT kernels is also given. The binary kernels are computationally faster by about 80-90% on a conventional computer. Reconstructed CT images using both conventional kernels and their transformed binary equivalents are compared.