Patent ID: 8165385

Claim:
A method of providing a three-dimensional image representation of an object, said object capable of detectably attenuating a signal resulting from scanning, comprising: scanning said object with a scanning-medium capable of producing an original three-dimensional image of said object using original three-dimensional image representation units; and supersampling said original three-dimensional image by representing the original three-dimensional image using three-dimensional image representation units comprising a higher spatial frequency than the original three-dimensional image representation units, the supersampling comprising recomputing voxel-values associated with the object in a higher spatial frequency coordinate space than a coordinate space associated with the original three-dimensional image representation units, thereby improving image resolution, the supersampling being performed using trilinear interpolation of each voxel value at location (x n , y n , z n ), wherein each supersampled voxel value is defined in terms of eight nearest neighbors in an original space v(x i ,y j ,z k ) associated with the original three-dimensional image using v ⁡ ( x n , y n , z n ) = ∑ i = 0 1 ⁢ ⁢ ∑ j = 0 1 ⁢ ⁢ ∑ k = 0 1 ⁢ ⁢ ( 1 - dx i / rx ) ⁢ ( 1 - dy j / ry ) ⁢ ( 1 - dz k / rz ) ⁢ v ⁡ ( x i , y j , z k ) ( 3.14 ) where i=[ 0|1] j=[ 0|1] k=[ 0|1], (3.10) dx i =|x n −x i | dy j =|y n −y j | dz k =|z n −x k |, and (3.11) rx=|x 1 −x 0 | ry=|y 1 −y 0 | rz=|z 1 −x 0 |. (3.12)