A general adaptive decomposition method for multi-energy spectral CT

Dual- and multi-energy X-ray imaging opens a door of additional capability for X-ray imaging systems. Decoupling the interleaved information of material and energy is one of the key issues. This work is to propose a new method to decompose the energy-dependent information and material-dependent information. Our method introduce an system-based optimization idea in picking basis functions which, in special cases, are attenuation curve of basis materials along energy or photo-electric/Compton-scatter cross-section. The method is validated with simulation experiments. With this new method, one will be able to optimize the decomposition according to the imaging material components and the energy coverage used in the system. Therefore, one would be able to optimize the system design to gain better image quality.