Ring artifacts reduction in cone-beam CT images based on independent component analysis

Cone-beam CT (CBCT) scanners are based on volumetric tomography, using a 2D extended digital array providing an area detector [1]. Compared to traditional CT, CBCT has many advantages, such as less X-ray beam limitation, high image accuracy, rapid scan time, etc. However, in CBCT images there are always some ring artifacts that appear as rings centered on the rotation axis. Due to the data of the constructed images are corrupted by these ring artifacts, qualitative and quantitative analysis of CBCT images will be compromised. Post processing and application such as image segmentation and registration also turn more complex as the presence of such artifacts. In this paper, a method based on independent component analysis (ICA) is presented. It deals with the reconstructed CBCT image and can effectively reduce such ring artifacts.