Research on ring artifact reduction method for CT images of nuclear graphite components.

Background: The supporting structure of high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGR) comprises over 3000 carbon/graphite components, necessitating computed tomography (CT) non-destructive testing before operational deployment as per reactor technical specifications. However, CT images are frequently marred by severe ring artifacts due to the response non-uniformity and non-linearity of detector units, which diminishes the ability to detect defects effectively.

Methods: To address this issue, we propose a physics-based ring artifacts reduction method for CT that employs pixel response correction.