Talk:Spiral computed tomography

Change of name
Can I suggest that the article rename from Helcal cone beam computed Tomography to spiral computed tomography be reversed? The trajectory used is helical, and while it is true Kalendar prefers the term spiral, the mathematically correct term helical is also in widespread use.Billlion (talk) 01:43, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Which issue are you discussing: "helical" vs. "spiral", or the presence of "cone beam" in the title? --Arcadian (talk) 11:32, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually that is a good point. Cone beam has to include general trajectories including circle (still widely used in dental and material science), helical, multi threaded helix etc. Helical certainly has to cover helical cone beam and helical fan beam. Are these really separate articles? Do we need articles down to this level of detail? Well possibly as helical cone beam reconstruction including Katsevich, Pi-line, rebinning methods etc could certainly expand to be an article on its own. On the other hand maybe for the amount of material we have at the moment perhaps one article on 3D CT methods in general is enough.Billlion (talk) 14:04, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Can helical data be preserved without conversion to slices?
Is there any generally agreed-on file format for preserving helical scan data in its original complex spiral state? Sure, DICOM is a "friendly" format with its 2D slices but it appears 2D slicing of the helical scan is probably a poor substitute for the original helical data.

At best 2D slice conversion appears to involve averaging the helical data into a flat plane, and may introduce imaging artifacts where there is a shadowed gap in the helical data due to implants. Apparently DICOM is only a 2D plane file format and incapable of handling the true, full complexity of spiral scanning.

It seems feasible with the computing power of nVidia/ATI in desktop computers that there is no need to "dumb down" the helical data into a simple 2D format, and modern computers should be capable of dealing with the helical scan data directly.

(I'm also asking about this at Talk:DICOM.) DMahalko (talk) 16:59, 3 July 2011 (UTC)


 * This is a forum for discussing improvements to the article rather than general questions.Billlion (talk) 06:15, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
 * People like you are quite irritating because what you fail to see is that the answers to questions like this would be turned into content and "improvements" for the article. Either help answer the question or be quiet. DMahalko (talk) 10:47, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry if you are irritated. I was simply stating policy WP:NOT. This artile is only a stub and it is a long way short of covering file formats. You could try Reference desk, or it might be relevant to improving the article DICOM (which needs improvement)Billlion (talk) 20:23, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I am merely citing policy WP:IAR. Sometimes the rules can be ignored if they get results, and ignoring them is not too horrible an inconvenience for everyone else. WP:NOTFORUM is really only relevant for high traffic talk pages that already have too much going on. This talk page is nearly dormant so a little chatter won't be an impediment for editors.


 * Also, the "help desk" is likely to be even less help than just waiting for an answer from experts that happen to find this talk page by accident. DMahalko (talk) 20:37, 4 July 2011 (UTC)


 * I came here to get an answer to the same question. I saw Billion's answer at Talk:DICOM I agree article should cover it to explain how it gets higher resolution with no extra radiation exposure. Maybe a spiral/helix of say 1 cm per revolution is computed into virtual slices of 1 mm ?? Resolution, I guess, for fan or cone beam devices depends more on sensor pixel size (and angles between snapshots). - Rod57 (talk) 00:55, 28 March 2016 (UTC)