In the M.4 Radiographic Testing session, Varex Imaging presented “Eliminating Artifacts and Boosting Efficiency with Varex TrueSpectrum™ Imaging” (Talk ID326), by Dr. Jonathan Schock with co-authors Martin Hu and Mike Stamm.
The challenge is familiar to anyone inspecting multi-material parts. A steel spring inside a polymer housing — like the everyday auto-injector pen used in the talk — produces strong beam-hardening artifacts that bury the features you need to detect and measure. The conventional fix, heavy copper beam filtration, reduces those artifacts but throws away flux: more dose, longer scans, and still some residual artifacts.
TrueSpectrum takes a different route. Using dual-energy acquisition on a photon-counting detector, it reaches cleaner interiors and surfaces from a single scan — with no physical filter in the beam.
What the talk covered
The problem: Multi-material parts create beam-hardening artifacts that block both detection and measurement in CT.
Two paths, one scan: VMI tuned for interior volume; TrueSpectrum Express (TSx) for exterior surface quality — from the same acquisition.
Breaking the trade-off: Artifact reduction without the dose, time, and flux penalty of heavy beam filtration.
What is TrueSpectrum™ Imaging?
TrueSpectrum is Varex Imaging’s dual-energy imaging approach, built on a photon-counting detector. It gives users two complementary paths from a single acquisition: a VMI (virtual monoenergetic imaging) route tuned for the best interior-volume quality, and TrueSpectrum Express (TSx), a streamlined route that excels at exterior surface quality — without material decomposition, calibration materials, or a separate VMI step. The result is artifact reduction and efficiency, breaking the trade-off that conventional beam filtration forces.
Varex Tube and Detector used in presentation
X-ray Tube
HPE-450-54
An industrial X-ray tube built on Varex’s HPE (High Performance Emitter) technology, which concentrates the electron beam into a regular shape for a sharper, more consistent focal spot.
X-ray Detector
DC-THOR.10G
Varex’s highest-framerate photon-counting detector, built for rapid multi-energy acquisition — the detector technology behind the dual-energy scan that drives TrueSpectrum.
