REGULARIZATION TECHNIQUE FOR DENSITOMETRIC CORRECTION

Method and apparatus for scatter-glare correction in x-ray diagnostic images from a patient. A reference object placed between the x-ray source and the subject is imaged in superposition with the subject without completely blocking any area of the subject image. The density distribution of the reference object is designed to have very small spatial correlation with the density distribution of the subject. The scatter-glare component is modeled by convoluting the primary component with a parameterized response function. During post-processing of the digital image, the unknown parameters of the response function are adjusted to minimize a cost function based on the expectation that the correlation between the reference object and the subject should be small and that the values of the parameters not deviate significantly from the estimated values for a typical patient. The scatter-glare component of the subject and the reference object, as well as the image of the reference object, are subsequently subtracted from the raw image to yield the image of the subject free of scatter-glare effects.