A filter design method for beam hardening correction in middle-energy x-ray computed tomography

Beam hardening artifact is common in X-ray computed tomography (X-CT). Using the metal sheet as a filter to preferentially attenuate low-energy photons is a simple and effective way for beam hardening artifact correction. However, generally it requires a large quantity of experiments to compare the filter material and thickness, which is lack of guidance of theory. In this paper, a novel filter design method for beam hardening correction, especially for middle energy X-CT, is presented. First, the spectrum of X-ray source under a certain tube voltage is estimated by Monte Carlo (MC) simulation or other simulation methods. Next, according to the X-ray mass attenuation coefficients of the object material, the energy range to be retained can be roughly determined in which the attenuation coefficients change slowly. Then, the spectra filtering performance with different filter materials and thicknesses can be calculated using the X-ray mass attenuation coefficients of each filter material and the simulated primitive spectrum. After that, the mean energy ratio (MER) of post-filter mean energy to pre-filter mean energy is obtained. Finally, based on the spectrum filtering performance and MER of the metal material, a suitable filter strategy is easily selected. Experimental results show that, the proposed method is simple and effective on beam hardening correction as well as increasing the image quality.