In this paper we present a modern object oriented component object model (C
OM) C++ toolkit dedicated to fully 3D cone-beam tomography. The toolkit all
ows the display and visual manipulation of analytical phantoms, projection
sets and volumetric data through a standard Windows graphical user interfac
e. Data input/output is performed using proprietary file formats but import
/export of industry standard file formats, including raw binary, Windows bi
tmap and AVI, ACR/NEMA DICOM 3 and NCSA HDF is available. At the time of wr
iting built-in implemented data manipulators include a basic phantom ray-tr
acer and a Matrox Genesis frame grabbing facility. A COM plug-in interface
is provided for user-defined custom backprojector algorithms: a simple Feld
kamp ActiveX control, including source code, is provided as an example. our
fast Feldkamp plug-in is also available. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ireland
Ltd. All rights reserved.