Solar Rotational Tomography Using the Filtered Backprojection Algorithm

Tomography is a method to reconstruct three-dimensional structure of an optically thin object. We can obtain the three-dimensional information by combining a number of projected images at different angles. Solar rotational tomography (SRT) is the tomographic method to estimate the coronal structures using the solar rotation. There are a few practical difficulties in solar coronal observation. One of the most crucial difficulty is handling the blocking area by the occulter or the Sun itself. So we have to use the iterative reconstruction for the SRT which can resolve that problem by using the forward modeling. In this study, we propose an alternative method to reconstruct the solar coronal structure: the filtered backprojection (FBP) algorithm. The FBP algorithm is based on the simple analytic solution. Thus it is easy to understand, and the computing cost is much cheaper than that of the iterative reconstruction. Recently we found a solution for the FBP algorithm to the problem of the blocking area in the solar EUV observations. We introduce how to apply the FBP algorithm to the SRT, and show the initial results of the performance test.