Refinement of Imaging Processing of Scatter Correction and Beam Hardening Tools for Industrial Radiography and Cone Beam CT

Digital detector arrays are used for industrial radiography and cone beam CT. Scattering and beam hardening artifacts reduce the achievable contrast sensitivity and can severely limit the size of the part to be scanned or require large amounts of shielding to block scatter outside the inspection area of interest. Varian’s image processing toolkit contains a set of dll’s that can easily be deployed to correct radiographs and enhance CT system performance. While this image processing package has been established in the medical area it is not starting to be applied to industrial imaging. Recently, a study was performed on a selection of aluminum industrial parts at 225 kV where computed scatter and beam hardening corrections were shown to improve DR contrast sensitivity and CT number uniformity. In this study, new results are presented based on studies of steel and aluminum parts with 225 kV and 950 kV x-ray sources. Additionally, the effect of a resolution enhancement algorithm (REA) that corrects the light spread from thicker scintillator screens and allows the user to take advantage of higher efficiency screens without sacrificing spatial resolution is evaluated.