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+# The ASTRA Toolbox
+
+The ASTRA Toolbox is a MATLAB toolbox of high-performance GPU primitives for 2D and 3D tomography.
+
+We support 2D parallel and fan beam geometries, and 3D parallel and cone beam.  All of them have highly flexible source/detector positioning.
+
+A large number of 2D and 3D algorithms are available, including FBP, SIRT, SART, CGLS.
+
+The basic forward and backward projection operations are GPU-accelerated, and directly callable from MATLAB to enable building new algorithms.
+
+
+
+## Documentation / samples
+
+See the matlab code samples in samples/ and on http://sf.net/projects/astra-toolbox .
+
+
+## Installation instructions
+
+### Windows, binary
+
+Add the mex and tools subdirectories to your matlab path.
+
+### Linux, from source
+
+Requirements: g++, boost, CUDA (driver+toolkit), matlab
+
+```
+cd build/linux
+./configure --with-cuda=/usr/local/cuda \
+            --with-matlab=/usr/local/MATLAB/R2012a \
+            --prefix=/usr/local/astra
+make
+make install
+```
+Add /usr/local/astra/lib to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
+Add /usr/local/astra/matlab and its subdirectories (tools, mex)
+  to your matlab path.
+
+
+NB: Each matlab version only supports a specific range of g++ versions.
+Despite this, if you have a newer g++ and if you get errors related to missing
+GLIBCXX_3.4.xx symbols, it is often possible to work around this requirement
+by deleting the version of libstdc++ supplied by matlab in
+MATLAB_PATH/bin/glnx86 or MATLAB_PATH/bin/glnxa64 (at your own risk).
+
+
+### Windows, from source using Visual Studio 2008
+
+Requirements: Visual Studio 2008, boost, CUDA (driver+toolkit), matlab.
+Note that a .zip with all required (and precompiled) boost files is
+  available from our website.
+
+Set the environment variable MATLAB_ROOT to your matlab install location.
+Open astra_vc08.sln in Visual Studio.
+Select the appropriate solution configuration.
+  (typically Release_CUDA|win32 or Release_CUDA|x64)
+Build the solution.
+Install by copying AstraCuda32.dll or AstraCuda64.dll from bin/ and
+  all .mexw32 or .mexw64 files from bin/Release_CUDA or bin/Debug_CUDA
+  and the entire matlab/tools directory to a directory to be added to
+  your matlab path.
+
+
+## References
+
+If you use parallel beam GPU code for your research, we would appreciate it if you would refer to the following paper:
+
+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.
+
+## License
+
+The ASTRA Toolbox is open source under the GPLv3 license.
+
+## Contact
+
+email: astra@uantwerpen.be
+website: http://sf.net/projects/astra-toolbox
+
+Copyright: 2010-2015, iMinds-Vision Lab, University of Antwerp
+           2014-2015, CWI, Amsterdam
+           http://visielab.uantwerpen.be/ and http://www.cwi.nl/
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