Some fast calculations simulating measurements from single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) imaging

Abstract As a mathematical problem, methods of image reconstruction from projections imply solving integral equations. Both physical and instrumental difficulties in the clinical environment worsens the already difficult inverse tomographic problem leading it into an ill-posed one. Owing to the modelling uncertainty and the large number of different methods proposed in literature to solve the SPECT image reconstruction problem, the system simulation by more or less complex mathematical phantoms is an invaluable tool to compare different reconstruction algorithms and try to optimize the parameters from which those depend on. But, simulation will actually be helpful to researcher if it is able to combine fast execution with easy comparison of the results. For this purpose, in this first phase of our work involving the fast and simple filtered backprojection method of image reconstruction from projections, we have decided on using closed form solutions and the widely-circulated Matlab fast computing environment. Though Matlab is just able to perform vectored processing, in sight of future implementation, we have got solutions ready for both parallel and vectored computation.