Patent ID: 8075183

Claim:
A method of evaluating axial and trans-axial resolution of a scanner of a volumetric imaging system, comprising: placing an image phantom comprising a high contrast sphere in a uniform medium within a field of view of said scanner; scanning the image phantom using the scanner and generating resultant volumetric image data (voxels); identifying a first conic region having a vertex generally coincident with the sphere centroid, said first conic region being centered about a positive axis of the scanning geometry of the scanner and identifying a second conic region having a vertex generally coincident with the sphere centroid, said second conic region being centered about a negative axis of the scanning geometry; processing voxels within the first and second conic regions to assemble surface spread curves in positive and negative axial directions; processing voxels outside of the first and second conic regions to assemble surface spread curves in positive and negative trans-axial directions; and processing the surface spread curves in the positive and negative axial and trans-axial directions to yield a modulation transfer function representing the axial and trans-axial resolution of said scanner.