A new field-of-view autotracking method for online tomography reconstruction based on back-projected ray image cross-correlation.

We devised a new field-of-view autotracking method for online tomography reconstruction based on a cross-correlation between a pair of neighbours, called back-projected ray images, among a specimen tilt sequence. One ray image is calculated through normal filtered back-projection only in the cross-sectional plane from each projection image. This ray-image matching can reliably track the field-of-view because a pair of neighbouring ray images mostly cross-correlates at the existing three-dimensional object position. Online experiments using real specimens resulted in successful autotracking performance with high accuracy, and online tomograms were obtained immediately after the final tracking at the last tilting angle.