Patent ID: 7046831

Claim:
A method of augmenting a tomographic projection image of a patient, the method comprising the steps of: obtaining a first sinogram data set from a patient, the first sinogram data set including incomplete or imperfect data; reconstructing the first sinogram data set into a first image; aligning the first image to a second image, the second image being separate and independent from the first image and obtained from the patient at a different time from the first image, the second image including complete image data to obtain an aligned image, so that optimal registration between the first and second image is obtained; reprojecting the aligned image into a reprojected sinogram data set; extracting data from the reprojected sinogram data set that is missing from or not available in the first sinogram data set; augmenting the first sinogram data set with the extracted data from the reprojected sinogram data set to obtain an augmented sinogram data set; and reconstructing the augmented sinogram data set into a third image.