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Both beam hardening and the detection of scattered radiation cause nonlinearity errors in x-ray computed tomography (CT), leading to artifacts and CT number inaccuracies. Dual-energy measurements can be used to correct beam hardening effects to a high degree of accuracy. However, in the imaging of thick body sections the transmitted intensity of the primary beam is low, making scatter the most significant cause of CT number inaccuracy. Furthermore, the scatter-to-primary ratio is energy dependent, causing a shift in the apparent effective atomic number of the absorbing material. We have measured scatter under a variety of conditions on a third generation CT scanner with dual-energy capability in order to determine its effect on the accuracy of quantitative measurements. The effects of off focus radiation, detector cross-talk, and detector dark current were also accounted for in the analysis of the measured scatter data. Our results indicate that on this well collimated system, an accurate correction for scatter can be made based on the detected intensity in projections.
Vetter et al. (Thu,) studied this question.