Ring-artifacts removal for photon-counting CT.

Abstract

Ring artifacts usually appear in photon counting computed tomography (PCCT) images, which may compromise image quality and cause non-uniformity bias. This study proposed a fast ring artifacts removal method by exploring the correlation from projections with different views for PCCT. This method has three advantages. First, our method only employ mean projection of current scan to correct projections without additional scans. Second, our method can correct the inconsistency of all detector pixels simultaneously without locating the inconsistent response pixels. Third, it can preserve reconstructed image details well without extra computational cost. Both numerical and preclinical experiments demonstrate the proposed method can suppress the ring artifacts very well than the competitors.