Improved Material Identification Using Multi-Energy CT Data

Described is a computer-implemented method for identifying and/or quantifying, and presenting one or more materials represented by data produced by a multi-energy CT system using three or more energy bands, using a computer program product, the method comprising receiving, directly or indirectly, an image data set from a multi-energy CT system using three or more energy bands and storing said data on a data storage medium; processing the data using one or more reconstruction techniques to produce a data set of reconstructed voxels; comparing each voxel in the reconstructed data set to a reference set of material signal amplitude and noise properties stored on a data storage medium; classifying the voxels into air, low density or high density voxels; selecting a first material decomposition method to be applied to low density voxels and/or selecting a second material decomposition method to be applied to higher density voxels; applying a first material decomposition method to the low density voxels, the first material decomposition method including using volume constrained non-negative linear least squares to aid material identification; and/or applying a second material decomposition method to the high density voxels, the second material decomposition method including using an method that aids material identification by enforcing a sparse representation of the material composition for each voxel; identifying specific materials within the object based on the solutions from g) and h); and presenting material identification information to an interface. Also described are methods of identifying or quantifying specific materials using these methods. a) T--- --- ---