Parallel Computer Processing

Since each view can be processed independently, filtered backprojection is amendable to parallel processing. Indeed, this has been used in commercial scanners to speed reconstruction. This parallelism is exploited both in the CTSim graphical shell and in the LAM version of CTSimText. CTSim can distribute it's workload amongst multiple processors working in parallel.

The graphical shell will automatically take advantage of multiple CPU's when running on a Symmetric Multiprocessing computer. Dual-CPU computers are commonly available which provide a near doubling in reconstruction speeds. CTSim, though, has no limits on the number of CPU's that can be used in parallel. The LAM version of CTSimText is designed to work in a cluster of computers. This has been testing with a cluster of 16 computers in a Beowulf-class cluster with excellent results.