Patent Document ID: 20120134561
Application ID: 12955227
Patent Status: 0

Claim One:
1. A method comprising: acquiring a first set of projection data corresponding to X-rays generated at a first energy level and a second set of projection data corresponding to X-rays generated at a second energy level; decomposing the first set and the second set of projection data into a first set of material projection data corresponding to a first basis material and a second set of material projection data corresponding to a second basis material; reconstructing a first materially decomposed (MD) image of the first basis material using the first set of material projection data and a second MD image of the second basis material using the second set of material projection data; estimating a direction of correlation between noise values corresponding to the first MD image and noise values corresponding to the second MD image; diffusing the first MD image and the second MD image to generate a first diffused image and a second diffused image based on the estimated direction of correlation; generating a first noise mask by subtracting the first diffused image from the first MD image and generating a second noise mask by subtracting the second diffused image from the second MD image; processing one or more edges corresponding to the first MD image with the first noise mask to generate a final first noise mask, and processing one or more edges corresponding to the second MD image with the second noise mask to generate a final second noise mask; and processing the first MD image with the final second noise mask to generate a final first MD image and processing the second MD image with the final first noise mask to generate a final second MD image.