Simulation of beam hardening in X-ray tomography and its correction using linearisation and pre-filtering approaches

Beam hardening is one of the major artefacts, which arises due to the polychromatic nature of the X-ray source, that reduces the quality of the reconstructed image in X-ray computed tomography. This paper describes the simulation of a tomogram with beam hardening and its correction using linearisation and pre-filtering methods. The simulation studies show that 70% of the maximum energy is required for full object penetration and to obtain minimum beam hardening. Also, the pre-filtering offers better beam hardening correction due to the removal of low-energy photons. The simulation results are found to be in good agreement with the experimental results. After beam hardening correction, 3D visualisation and dimensional analysis of a stator motor core specimen has been demonstrated.