A Comparative Study of Two Methods for the Correction of Beam Hardening Artifacts in X-ray Computed Tomography by

The polychromatic energy spectrum of common x-ray sources causes so-called beam hardening artifacts in x-ray computed tomography images. The artifacts typically contain dark streaks and overall cupping. In this paper we compare two methods for reducing such artifacts. A correction method proposed by Herman and Trivedi in 1985, and an iterative correction method by G. Van Gompel et al. in 2011. We describe and implement both correction methods and provide numerical experiments for comparison.