Keywords:
reconstruction, cone beam CT, noise, beam hardening, scatter
Data degradations including quantum noise, beam hardening and scatter remain a major issue in preclinical/clinical applications, despite the recent advances in x-ray computed tomography. Substantial efforts have been devoted to address individual degradations, however, little attention has been paid to minimize the adverse effects in a unified fashion. In this paper, we combine image reconstruction and artifact reduction in a physics-based synergistic framework. Simulation results showed that less than 10 HU error could be achieved with the proposed framework. Real data experiments showed that the corrected reconstructions with the proposed method exhibited comparable CT values and noise levels as the associated planning CT images.