As many different 3D volumes could produce the same 2D x-ray image, inverting
this process is challenging. We show that recent deep learning-based
convolutional neural networks can solve this task. As the main challenge in
learning is the sheer amount of data created when extending the 2D image into a
3D volume, we suggest firstly to learn a coarse, fixed-resolution volume which
is then fused in a second step with the input x-ray into a high-resolution
volume. To train and validate our approach we introduce a new dataset that
comprises of close to half a million computer-simulated 2D x-ray images of 3D
volumes scanned from 175 mammalian species. Applications of our approach
include stereoscopic rendering of legacy x-ray images, re-rendering of x-rays
including changes of illumination, view pose or geometry. Our evaluation
includes comparison to previous tomography work, previous learning methods
using our data, a user study and application to a set of real x-rays