Dual-energy CT metal artifact reduction by combined material decomposition and projection domain threshold segmentation

Dual-energy CT exploits the different attenuation characteristics of substances under different energy X-rays and collects high- and low-energy data from the same area to differentiate and quantify specific substances, which is now widely used in clinical diagnosis, disease monitoring, and other fields. If the object scanned during dual-energy CT imaging contains metallic material, the reconstructed image will suffer from metal artifacts. Metal artifacts in dual-energy CT result in surrounding tissue structures presenting erroneous CT values, blurred image details, and unclear border demarcation lines, which seriously affects the quality of the images as well as the accuracy of clinical diagnosis. To reduce metal artifacts in dual-energy CT, we combine material decomposition techniques with metal artifact reduction to explore metal artifact reduction methods applied to dual-energy CT.