End-to-end differentiable spectral ct imaging

A spectral CT system, comprising:

• at least one memory storing computer-executable instructions;
• and
• at least one processor configured to execute the computer-executable instructions to perform operations including:
• receiving spectral data including measurements acquired at two or more distinct X-ray energy spectra ranges of a spectral Computed Tomography (CT) system, the spectral data having been generated by a detector of the spectral CT system;
• processing the spectral data through a differentiable image processing pipeline, wherein the differentiable image processing pipeline includes a differentiable preprocessing operator that transforms the spectral data into preprocessed spectral data, a differentiable material decomposition operator that generates material decomposition values based on the preprocessed spectral data and a forward detector model of the detector, and a differentiable image reconstruction operator that generates one or more images based on the material decomposition values;
• determining an image domain loss based on the one or more images;
• and
• updating one or more parameters of at least one of the differentiable preprocessing operator or the forward detector model by backpropagating gradients of the image domain loss through the differentiable image reconstruction operator and the differentiable material decomposition operator, resulting in a calibrated version of the differentiable image processing pipeline.

A computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer-readable memory having program instructions embodied therewith, the program instructions executable by a processor to cause the processor to:

• receive spectral data including measurements acquired at two or more distinct X-ray energy spectra ranges of a spectral Computed Tomography (CT) system;
• generate, based on the spectral data, material decomposition values corresponding to a plurality of basis materials using a differentiable material decomposition process configured to map the spectral data into the material decomposition values;
• and
• generate one or more images based on the material decomposition values.