Numerical removal of ring artifacts in microtomography

Defective and insufficient calibrated detector elements introduce ring or half-circle artifacts in microtomographic image reconstructions. A computationally efficient numerical filter is presented which suppresses these defects by taking advantage of the particular appearance of ring artifacts in the Fourier transforms of the recorded sinograms. The performance of the filter is demonstrated on experimental data taken with high-energy synchrotron radiation in phase-contrast (outline) mode.