CoBRA: Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CT) Reconstruction Code in Interactive Data Language (IDL)

Abstract

<p>In support of stockpile stewardship and other important missions, Los Alamos is continually looking for fast and effective ways of inspecting and evaluating industrial parts. Thus, Los Alamos is continually striving to improve our radiography and computed tomography (CT) capabilities. Cormack [1] and Hounsfield [2] received the Nobel Prize in 1979 for their pioneering work in computed tomography that led to the development of medical scanners. Copley et al. [3] provides a good history of the development of industrial CT systems. The early systems collect data via a single detector or linear detector array. While CT offers greatly increased spatial resolutions over radiography, CT inspections with a linear array are slow and costly. To improve the viability of CT for NDT applications, Feldkamp, Davis, and Kress [4] reported a cone beam reconstruction technique that speeds up the CT process by using image data rather than data collected by a linear array. Because it potentially offers processing speeds up to 10 times faster than CT systems that use a linear array, we are building a cone beam CT for use with our 20 MV x-ray source and Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) neutron sources. Our software, called CoBRA, is a portable cone beam reconstruction code for CT applications that efficiently and rapidly reconstructs large data sets. CoBRA applications include both x-ray and neutron inspections using x-ray phosphor screens coupled to either a CCD camera or flat-panel amorphous silicon arrays. Photographs of two amorphous silicon arrays (128 × 128 and 1600 × 200) are shown in Figure 1.</p>