Patent Document ID: 9934597
Application ID: 14483266
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for reducing metal artifacts in a volume radiographic image, the method executed at least in part on a computer and comprising: reconstructing a first 3-D-image using measured 2D projection images; forming a 3-D image metal mask that contains metal voxels in the first 3-D-image; for each measured 2D projection image, forward projecting the 3-D image metal mask to form a projection metal mask of pixels resulting therefrom in a corresponding 2D projection metal image; forming a metal obstruction 3-D map that indicates the extent to which each voxel in the first 3-D-image is obstructed by metal; forming a plurality of composite 2D projection images, wherein each composite 2D projection image is formed by modifying measured 2D projection image data for pixels for said each measured 2D projection image within the projection metal mask of the corresponding 2D projection metal image with calculated 2D projection image data for the corresponding pixels; reconstructing a metal artifact reduced 3-D image from the plurality of composite 2D projection images; modifying non-metal voxels in the metal artifact reduced 3-D image identified by the metal obstruction 3-D map, where the modified non-metal voxels include voxels that are not neighbors of the metal voxels; and displaying the modified metal artifact reduced 3-D image.