COMPENSATION OF COMPUTED TOMOGRAPHY DATA FOR X-RAY DETECTOR AFTERGLOW ARTIFACTS

An x-ray CT system has a detector which revolves about the object being imaged to acquire attenuation data from many different angles through a range of at least 180.degree.. The response of the detector has a time lag which as the detector revolves tends to blur the attenuation data. The acquired data is compensated for the resolution degradation by convolving the data with a function that is the inverse of a response function of the detector. An image can be reconstructed from this compensated data. However, this compensation process tends to reintroduce noise that was reduced by the blurring. As a result, a modified version of the detector response function is applied to the compensated data to reduce the noise without degrading the image resolution to an unacceptable level.