ASTRA Toolbox

ASTRA Tomography Toolbox

The ASTRA Tomography Toolbox (“All Scale Tomographic Reconstruction Antwerp”) bundles a number of algorithms that were developed by the ASTRA research group of the Vision Lab. The toolbox is not application specific, reflecting the goal of the group to study the underlying mathematical techniques behind tomographic reconstruction. Most of the publications of the ASTRA group make use of this toolbox.

Highlights

• A MATLAB wrapper around the basic C++ and CUDA code makes the toolbox easy to use.
• A large number of 2D and 3D algorithms are available, like FBP, SIRT, SART, CGLS, etc. The forward and back projector can also be called separately, to enable building new algorithms.
• For most of the algorithms, an optimized GPU implementation is available (see, e.g., Performance improvements for iterative electron tomography reconstruction using GPUs).
• Specification of the scanner geometry can be highly flexible, with completely free detector and source positioning, in addition to the classical geometries (parallel, fan, and cone beam).

Download

You can download the ASTRA Toolbox from SourceForge.

Training Course

A free training course on Computed Tomography and the ASTRA Toolbox is available here.

References

W. Van Aarle, W J. Palenstijn, J. Cant, E. Janssens, F. Bleichrodt, A. Dabravolski, J. De Beenhouwer, K. J. Batenburg, and J. Sijbers, "Fast and Flexible X-ray Tomography Using the ASTRA Toolbox", Optics Express, vol. 24, no. 22, pp. 25129-25147, 2016.

W. van Aarle, W J. Palenstijn, J. De Beenhouwer, T. Altantzis, S. Bals, K. J. Batenburg, and J. Sijbers, "The ASTRA Toolbox: a platform for advanced algorithm development in electron tomography", Ultramicroscopy, Vol. 147, p. 35–47, (2015)

W J. Palenstijn, K J. Batenburg, and J. Sijbers, "Performance improvements for iterative electron tomography reconstruction using graphics processing units (GPUs)", Journal of structural biology, vol. 176, issue 2, pp. 250-253, 2011