Dart: A Fast Heuristic Algebraic Reconstruction Algorithm for Discrete Tomography

Abstract

Discrete tomography (DT) is concerned with the tomographic reconstruction of images that consist of only a small number of gray levels. DT reconstruction problems are usually underdetermined. Therefore, incorporation of heuristic rules to guide the reconstruction algorithm towards an optimal as well as intuitive solution would be valuable. In this paper, we introduce DART: a new, heuristic DT algorithm that is based on an iterative algebraic reconstruction method. Starting from a continuous reconstruction, a discrete image is reconstructed by consistent updating of border pixels. Using simulation experiments, it is shown that the DART algorithm is capable of computing high quality reconstructions from substantially fewer projections than required for conventional continuous tomography.