Technical advances in multi-slice spiral CT

X-ray computerised tomography (CT) scanning with continuous patient transport has been established under the name Spiral CT since several years as the standard clinical examination procedure. This technique has bern improved continuously with respect to scan speed, temporal response and z-axis resolution by the use of latest technical developments: Rotation times up to 0.5 s and multi-row detector array systems. Today detector systems with M = 4 simultaneously measured slices are available. We report about recent progress of spiral CT reconstruction algorithms that are based on multi-slice data. It is demonstrated that the new technology not only provides significant reduction in overall scan limes and thereby of the CT scanner's X-ray tube load; beyond that, the new technology allows CT imaging of the beating heart with high level image quality in standard clinical routine. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.