  Classical iterative methods for tomographic reconstruction include the class
of Algebraic Reconstruction Techniques (ART). Convergence of these stationary
linear iterative methods is however notably slow. In this paper we propose the
use of Krylov solvers for tomographic linear inversion problems. These advanced
iterative methods feature fast convergence at the expense of a higher
computational cost per iteration, causing them to be generally uncompetitive
without the inclusion of a suitable preconditioner. Combining elements from
standard multigrid (MG) solvers and the theory of wavelets, a novel
wavelet-based multi-level (WMG) preconditioner is introduced, which is shown to
significantly speed-up Krylov convergence. The performance of the
WMG-preconditioned Krylov method is analyzed through a spectral analysis, and
the approach is compared to existing methods like the classical Simultaneous
Iterative Reconstruction Technique (SIRT) and unpreconditioned Krylov methods
on a 2D tomographic benchmark problem. Numerical experiments are promising,
showing the method to be competitive with the classical Algebraic
Reconstruction Techniques in terms of convergence speed and overall performance
(CPU time) as well as precision of the reconstruction.
