Patent Document ID: 4792900
Application ID: 06935282
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A medical diagnostic imaging apparatus for producing soft tissue and bone specific basis images from dual energy radiation data, the apparatus comprising: a radiation source for producing at least higher energy and lower energy radiation; a radiation detection means for separately detecting the higher and lower energy radiation traversing a selected region of interest and for producing digital electronic values indicative of the intensity of higher and lower energy radiation received thereby; a higher energy image memory means operatively connected with the detection means for storing the higher energy radiation intensity indicative digital electronic pixel values for each pixel for a higher energy image representation of the region of interest; a lower energy image memory means operatively connected with the detection means for storing the lower energy radiation intensity indicative digital electronic pixel values for each pixel for a lower energy image representation of the region of interest; a first convolver means for convolving a first filter function pixel by pixel with the digital values of the higher energy image representation and for convolving the first filter function pixel by pixel with the digital values of the lower energy image representation; a first filter function altering means for correspondingly adjusting a characteristic of the first filter function in accordance with the digital value of each pixel of at least one of the higher and lower energy image representations; a first transform means for transforming convolved values of corresponding pixels of the higher and lower energy representations into a digital gray scale value of a corresponding pixel of a soft tissue specific basis image; a soft tissue image memory means operatively connected with the first transform means for storing the gray scale values of the soft tissue basis image; a second convolver means for convolving a second filter function with the digital values of the higher energy image representation and convolving the second filter function with the digital values of the low energy image representation; a second filter function altering means for correspondingly adjusting a characteristic of the second filter function in accordance with the digital value of each pixel of at least one of the high and low energy image representations; and, a second transform means for transforming convolved values of corresponding pixels of the higher and lower energy image representations from the second convolver means into a digital gray scale value of a corresponding pixel of a bone specific basis image.