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With the development of technology, the traditional X-ray CT can’t meet the modern medical and industry needs for component distinguish and identification. This is due to the inconsistency of X-ray imaging system and reconstruction algorithm. In the current CT systems, X-ray spectrum produced by X-ray source is continuous in energy range determined by tube voltage and energy filter, and the attenuation coefficient of object is varied with the X-ray energy. So the distribution of X-ray energy spectrum plays an important role for beam-hardening correction, dual energy CT image reconstruction or dose calculation. However, due to high ill-condition and ill-posed feature of system equations of transmission measurement data, statistical fluctuations of X ray quantum and noise pollution, it is very hard to get stable and accurate spectrum estimation using existing methods. In this paper, a model-based X-ray energy spectrum estimation method from CT scanning data with energy spectrum filter is proposed. First, transmission measurement data were accurately acquired by CT scan and measurement using phantoms with different energy spectrum filter. Second, a physical meaningful X-ray tube spectrum model was established with weighted gaussian functions and priori information such as continuity of bremsstrahlung and specificity of characteristic emission and estimation information of average attenuation coefficient. The parameter in model was optimized to get the best estimation result for filtered spectrum. Finally, the original energy spectrum was reconstructed from filtered spectrum estimation with filter priori information. Experimental results demonstrate that the stability and accuracy of X ray energy spectrum estimation using the proposed method are improved significantly.
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