Patent Document ID: 7579584
Application ID: 11607718
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for correcting x-ray images, comprising the steps of: in a calibration procedure, irradiating an x-ray detector with x-rays, said x-ray detector comprising a plurality of detector elements, each of said detector elements emitting a series of detector signals upon being irradiated with said x-rays, and each of said detector signals exhibiting a detector-specific exponential decay curve having a decay constant, and identifying said decay curve in said calibration procedure; after said calibration procedure, irradiating said x-ray detector with x-rays to acquire a series of images from the x-ray detector at an acquisition rate, each of said images being comprised of image elements respectively associated with the detector elements; and only if said decay constant is of a same order of magnitude as said acquisition rate, computationally correcting each image in said series in a processor on an image element-by-image element basis, with each image element to be corrected having been acquired during a predetermined acquisition interval and comprising respective signal contributions that are dependent on said detector-specific exponential decay curve, to a total signal represented by that image element, from a current detector signal in said series and a plurality of preceding detector signals in said series, said current detector signal having been acquired at a point in time during the predetermined acquisition interval and said preceding detector intervals having been respectively acquired at said point in time during different preceding predetermined acquisition intervals; and in said processor, automatically electronically calculating said signal contributions of said preceding detector signals in said predetermined acquisition interval to obtain calculated contributions, and subtracting said calculated contributions from the total signal represented by the image element to be corrected, to obtain a corrected image that is emitted as an output from said processor.