Patent ID: 8396273

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a first signal representative of X-ray intensity from X-rays produced at a first energy level and a second signal representative of X-ray intensity from X-rays produced at a second energy level; reconstructing a first materially decomposed (MD) image of a first basis material and a second MD image of a second basis material based on the first signal and the second signal; reducing noise in the first MD image and the second MD image via filtering to produce a filtered first MD image and a filtered second MD image; generating a first noise mask by subtracting the first filtered MD image from the first MD image and a second noise mask by subtracting the second filtered MD image from the second MD image; processing the first noise mask and the second noise mask to remove or reduce data attributable to non-noise sources to generate a first processed noise mask and a second processed noise mask; processing the first MD image with the second processed noise mask and the second MD image with the first processed noise mask to generate a final first MD image and a final second MD image.