thereon are translated along a central horizontal axis of the examination region 16 in this manner the source 20 follows a helical path relative to the subject in the illustrated third generation ct scanner an array of radiation detectors 40 is mounted peripherally across from the source on the rotating gantry alternately a fourth generation ct scanner is employed with a stationary ring of radiation detectors not shown mounted on the stationary gantry 12 regardless of the configuration the radiation detectors are arranged to receive the radiation emitted from the source 20 after it has traversed the examination region 14 the radiation detectors 40 convert the detected radiation into electronic projection data that is each of the radiation detectors 40 produces an output signal which is proportional to an intensity of received radiation each radiation detector 40 generates data elements which correspond to projections along a corresponding ray within the view each element of data in a projection or data line is related to a line integral taken along its corresponding ray passing through the subject being reconstructed with source view geometry as is typical with third generation scanners each view or data line represents a fan of rays having an apex at the source 20 collected by concurrent sampling of all the radiation detectors 40 spanning the fan of radiation an acquisition memory 50 receives the sampled data from the radiation detectors 40 the acquisition memory 50 optionally performs filtering or other operations before passing the data to a reconstruction processor 60 which reconstructs image representations of the subject the reconstruction processor 60 processes the data from the acquisition memory board 50 and backprojects it into an image memory 70 the reconstruction processor 60 of the preferred embodiment.