Application of projection simulation based on physical imaging model to the evaluation of beam hardening corrections in X-ray transmission tomography

The polychromatic spectrum of photons emitted by an X-ray tube in medical diagnostic CT system brings beam hardening artifact. Although many correction methods have been developed, it is still the major artifact in clinical CT imaging. Motivated by CT reconstruction researches benefiting from mathematical phantoms, one so-called physical mathematical phantom and its projection simulation are presented in this paper, which are used in comprehensive evaluation of beam hardening corrections. Due to the inherent merits as compared to discrete and stochastic simulations, an analytic method is proposed to simulate the polychromatic projections of FORBILD head phantom. Firstly, CT-numbers are mapped to material compositions under the precondition sub-regions represent different human tissues. Second, boundary parameters of sub-regions are determined by the presented algorithms. Finally, projections are calculated according to X-ray energy spectrum. For validating the usefulness of our simulation, several typical correction methods are analyzed using simulated projections. The performance of every correction is exhibited distinctly. The analysis results show that there are still the spaces to improve those correction methods.