Enhancement of laser CT image contrast by correction of artifacts due to surface effects

Mismatched boundary conditions such as air-sample interface introduce artifacts that obscure internal information in the reconstructed laser computed tomographic (CT) images. Here, we demonstrate enhancement of target structure in the laser CT images by correcting the projection data using the experimentally determined angle dependence of sample surface attenuation. The images reconstructed with the corrected projection data are shown to have improved image contrast. Our proposed correction to laser CT reconstruction is effective for visualizing internal structure with small variations in the attenuation coefficients that would otherwise be masked by the dominant surface attenuation. (C) 1998 Optical Society of America.