Graphic processing unit (GPU) based hardware acceleration for high speed 3D cone-beam computed tomography (CT) reconstruction

The use of cone-beam projection based Computed Tomography (CT) is growing in the clinical area due to its being able to provide 3D information. On the other hand, rapid volumetric image reconstruction is of paramount importance to clinicians for prompt diagnosis and analysis of complex tissue alternations. In order to meet the high demand on computation for 3D image reconstruction algorithms, High Performance Computing (HPC) platforms such as the Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) actually can provide a new possible solution for such a highly computation-demanding application. This study aims to parallelize an analytical 3D CT image reconstruction algorithm, the so-called FDK method, and then to implement it on an existing commercial GPU, towards a highspeed 3D image reconstruction. The performance evaluation results of our study indicated that the use of GPU would represent a significant benefit to effectively accelerating the execution of the 3D image reconstruction task.