Tomography refers to imaging by sections or sectioning, through the use of any kind of penetrating wave. A device used in tomography is called a tomograph, while the image produced is a tomogram. Tomography as the computed tomographic (CT) scanner was invented by Sir Godfrey Hounsfield, and thereby made an exceptional contribution to medicine. The method is used in radiology, archaeology, biology, atmospheric science, geophysics, oceanography, plasma physics, materials science, astrophysics, quantum information, and other sciences. In most cases it is based on the mathematical procedure called tomographic reconstruction.
Etymology
The word tomography is derived from Ancient Greek τόμος tomos, "slice, section" and γÏάφω graphÅ, "to write".
Description
In conventional medical X-ray tomography, clinical staff make a sectional image through a body by moving an X-ray source and the film in opposite directions during the exposure. Consequently, structures in the focal plane appear sharper, while structures in other planes appear blurred. By modifying the direction and extent of the movement, operators can select different focal planes which contain the structures of interest. Before the advent of more modern computer-assisted techniques, this technique, developed in the 1930s by the radiologist Alessandro Vallebona, proved useful in reducing the problem of superimposition of structures in projectional (shadow) radiography.
In a 1953 article in the medical journal Chest, B. Pollak of the Fort William Sanatorium described the use of planography, another term for tomography. A chapter in the American Roentgen Ray Society's 1996 book A History of the Radiological Sciences also provides a detailed history of the development of conventional tomography from its inception until being supplanted by computer assisted tomographic techniques starting in the mid to late-1970s.
Modern tomography
More modern variations of tomography involve gathering projection data from multiple directions and feeding the data into a tomographic reconstruction software algorithm processed by a computer. Different types of signal acquisition can be used in similar calculation algorithms in order to create a tomographic image. Tomograms are derived using several different physical phenomena listed in the following table:
Some recent advances rely on using simultaneously integrated physical phenomena, e.g. X-rays for both CT and angiography, combined CT/MRI and combined CT/PET.
The term volume imaging might describe these technologies more accurately than the term tomography. However, in the majority of cases in clinical routine, staff request output from these procedures as 2-D slice images. As more and more clinical decisions come to depend on more advanced volume visualization techniques, the terms tomography/tomogram may go out of fashion.
Many different reconstruction algorithms exist. Most algorithms fall into one of two categories: filtered back projection (FBP) and iterative reconstruction (IR). These procedures give inexact results: they represent a compromise between accuracy and computation time required. FBP demands fewer computational resources, while IR generally produces fewer artifacts (errors in the reconstruction) at a higher computing cost.
Although MRI and ultrasound are transmission methods, they typically do not require movement of the transmitter to acquire data from different directions. In MRI, both projections and higher spatial harmonics are sampled by applying spatially-varying magnetic fields; no moving parts are necessary to generate an image. On the other hand, since ultrasound uses time-of-flight to spatially encode the received signal, it is not strictly a tomographic method and does not require multiple acquisitions at all.
Synchrotron X-ray tomographic microscopy
A new technique called synchrotron X-ray tomographic microscopy (SRXTM) allows for detailed three-dimensional scanning of fossils.
Types of tomography
Discrete tomography and Geometric tomography, on the other hand, are research areas that deal with the reconstruction of objects that are discrete (such as crystals) or homogeneous. They are concerned with reconstruction methods, and as such they are not restricted to any of the particular (experimental) tomography methods listed above.
See also
Media related to Tomography at Wikimedia Commons
- Chemical imaging
- Discrete tomography
- Geometric tomography
- Geophysical imaging
- Industrial CT scanning
- Medical imaging
- MRI compared with CT
- Network tomography
- Nonogram, a type of puzzle based on a discrete model of tomography
- Radon transform
- Tomographic reconstruction
- Multiscale Tomography
References
External links
- International Journal of Imaging and Robotics
- International Journal of Tomography & Statistics (IJTS)
- Microtomography/Synchrotron tomography