Calibration and data standardization of a prototype bench-top preclinical CT

This paper reports on the geometric calibration procedure of a bench-top, high-speed, and continuous-rotation preclinical computed tomography (CT) scanner that has been developed at our institution. A full 13-parameter model of the image formation process is described. Once calibrated, the model is used to modify projection data sets - the standardization operation - so that they appear to come from an ideal system. This technique has the advantage that standardized scans can be fed to any reconstruction algorithm since no awareness of the actual system geometry is required from the reconstruction program.