System and method for multi-energy X-ray imaging using a polychromatic source

A method for generating multi-energy computed tomography images of a subject using a polychromatic x-ray source with single spectrum, the method comprising:

• acquiring a measure of a polychromatic spectrum of a polychromatic x-ray beam generated by the polychromatic x-ray source with a single spectrum;
• acquiring attenuation data generated by operating the polychromatic x-ray source with a single spectrum;
• segmenting the attenuation data based on a plurality of attenuation thresholds corresponding to selected constituent materials of the subject to create a plurality of segmented datasets;
• generating template data from the plurality of segmented datasets by replacing portions of the attenuation data with a mean CT number of the selected constituent materials;
• generating polychromatic synthetic data by forward projecting the template data using the attenuation data;
• generating component synthetic data by forward projecting the template data using the plurality of segmented datasets;
• and
• using the attenuation data, the polychromatic synthetic data, and the component synthetic data, reconstruct a plurality of multi-energy images, including separable images weighted for each selected constituent materials.

A method for generating multi-energy computed tomography images of a subject using a polychromatic x-ray source with single x-ray spectrum, the method comprising:

• acquiring a measure of a polychromatic spectrum of a polychromatic x-ray beam generated by the polychromatic x-ray source;
• acquiring attenuation data generated by operating the polychromatic x-ray source;
• segmenting the attenuation data based on a plurality of component criteria to create a plurality of segmented datasets;
• generating template data from the segmented datasets;
• using the template data and the measure of the polychromatic spectrum, generating polychromatic synthetic data;
• using the template data and each of the segmented datasets, generating component synthetic data;
• and
• using the attenuation data, the polychromatic synthetic data, and the component synthetic data, reconstructing a plurality of multi-energy images, including separable images weighted for at least one of the component criteria.