The star transform is a generalized Radon transform mapping a function of two variables to its integrals along star-shaped trajectories, which consist of a finite number of rays emanating from a common vertex. Such operators appear in mathematical models of various imaging modalities based on scattering of elementary particles. The paper presents a comprehensive study of the inversion of the star transform. We describe the necessary and sufficient conditions for invertibility of the star transform, introduce a new inversion formula and discuss its stability properties. As an unexpected bonus of our approach, we prove a conjecture from algebraic geometry about the zero sets of elementary symmetric polynomials.
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