Beam hardening artifacts in computed tomography: comparison of photon-counting and energy-integrating detectors

We compared CT x-ray beam-hardening artifacts in a hybrid scanner with energy-integrating detectors (EID) versus photon-counting detectors (PCD) subsystems. EID-CT images had less beam hardening artifacts compared to PCD-CT images for x-ray tube voltages 120 kVp and higher. We further demonstrated that the inherent spectral information of PCDs can be used to effectively eliminate beam-hardening artifacts.