Image domain motion compensation for helical computed tomography (ct)

A computer-implemented method, comprising:

• obtaining projection data indicative of X-ray radiation traversing a volume over a scan angular illumination range during a helical CT scan;
• reconstructing the projection data based on a set of voxel-specific weighting functions to generate at least three sets of 3-D volumetric image data, each of the at least three sets corresponding to a different virtual time point in the helical scan;
• determining a 3-D motion vector field between 3-D volumetric image data corresponding to a predetermined sub-set of the different time points;
• and
• processing the at least three sets of 3-D volumetric image data based on the 3-D motion vector field to generate 3-D motion compensated 3-D volumetric image data.

A computer readable medium encoded with computer executable instructions, which, when executed by a processor, causes the processor to:

• obtain projection data indicative of X-ray radiation traversing a volume over a scan angular illumination range during a helical CT scan;
• reconstruct the projection data based on a set of voxel-specific weighting functions to generate at least three sets of 3-D volumetric image data, each of the at least three sets corresponding to a different virtual time point in the helical scan;
• determine a 3-D motion vector field between 3-D volumetric image data corresponding to a predetermined sub-set t of the different time points;
• and
• process the at least three sets of 3-D volumetric image data based on the 3-D motion vector field to generate 3-D motion compensated 3-D volumetric image data.