Automatic motion map generation in helical ct

Abstract

As an illustration of generating a motion map, although the cardiac CT is described for selecting an optimal phase, the disclosure is not limited to the cardiac CT. For the cardiac CT, the cardiac phase map is efficiently generated based upon helical scan data, and the optimal phase is selected within a reasonable time. At the same time, the optimal phase is accurately determined based upon complementary rays as indexes for minimal movement so as to select the projection data for minimizing artifacts in reconstructed cardiac images. The helically scanned data reflect motion within the same cardiac cycle or over the continuous cardiac cycles. The application of the complementary ray technique to the helically scanned data is accomplished by three-dimensionally determining a pair of the complementary rays in order to take into account motion within the same cardiac cycle or over the continuous cardiac cycles. The absolute sum of the differences for the top ray and or the bottom ray is determined in order to determine the amount of cardiac motion.