A cone or wedge-beam CT scanner(10) generates image data which is potentially artifacted with windmill artifacts which appear to emanate from one or more windmill artifact centers(48). The image data is high-pass filtered(42), and reconstructed(44) to generate an image representation(46) which depicts the windmill artifact centers(48), and a background field(54). A forward projection processor(66) forward projects this image representation to identify data trajectories or rays(60, 62, 64) which pass through a windmill artifact center, a penumbra, or only through the field. Each element of image data is filtered both with a resolution sharpening filter(70) and with a smoothing filter(72). The sharpened and the smoothed data values corresponding to a common ray are weightedly combined(74) in accordance with whether the corresponding common ray passes through a windmill artifact center or only through the field. The weightedly combined filtered data values are reconstructed(66) into an image representation. |