Patent ID: 7298812

Claim:
An imaging apparatus having a data acquisition system configured to reconstruct an image of an object and comprising a computer programmed to: define a given projection into a first segment and a second segment different from the first segment; acquire a first set of data in the first segment and acquire a second set of data in the second segment, wherein the first set of data is acquired at a first energy level and the second set of data is acquired at a second energy level that is different from the first energy level; reconstruct a first image from the first set of data and a second image from the second set of data; re-project the first image to a first set of corrected sinograms and re-project the second image to a second set of corrected sinograms; decompose the first and second sets of corrected sinograms and determine atomic number information for each ray of each corrected sinogram, wherein the step of decomposing comprises generating an atomic number of material composition map from the decomposition; reconstruct a first corrected image and a second corrected image from the first and the second sets of corrected sinograms; and automatically register the first and the second corrected images into a composite image substantially free of beam hardening artifacts, wherein the composite image provides material decomposition information.