| Faculty name: | Ken Jackson |
|---|---|
| Research area: | Scientific Computing |
| Campus address: | BA 4228 |
| Campus phone: | 416-978-7075 |
| Email address: |
krj [at] cs.toronto.edu
|
| Number of students: | 1-2 |
| Skills required: |
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One of the problems that our group has recently studied is how to cope with "beam-hardening" in computerized tomography (CT). This arises because most CT image reconstruction algorithms assume that the x-rays used for the CT scan all have the same energy. This makes the mathematical problem of reconstructing the image much simpler. However, in reality, the x-rays used in CT scans do not all have the same energy. This mismatch between the assumptions of the algorithm and the true physics of the problem results in "beam-hardening" artifacts in some images. This produces streaking and blurring in some images and generally reduces the image quality.
We have developed a CT scan reconstruction algorithm that takes into account the poly-energetic nature of the x-rays used in CT scans. One of the things that we would like to do is explore the parallelization of this algorithm. In particular, we would like to develop a version of the algorithm to run on parallel systems based on GPUs (Graphics Processing Units). Such systems have become very popular recently because they are a very cost-effective way to solve problems of this type.