XAP-Lab: A software tool for designing flexible X-ray acquisition protocols

Abstract

Background and Objective:the availability of digital X-ray detectors, together with the development of new robotized hardware and reconstruction algorithms, opens the opportunity to provide 3D capabilities with conventional radiology systems. This would be based on the acquisition of a limited number of projections with non-standard geometrical configurations. The versatility of these techniques is enormous, enabling the introduction of tomography in situations where a CT system is hardly available, such as during surgery or in an ICU, or in which a reduction of radiation dose is key, as in pediatrics. Computer simulations are a valuable tool to explore these possibilities before their actual implementation on real systems. Existing software tools generally simulate only standard acquisition protocols, such as cone-beam with circular trajectory, thus not allowing the users to evaluate more sophisticated projection geometries. The goal of this work is to design a simulation tool that enables the design of acquisition protocols with flexible projection geometries....