When a patent carries the title "Radiation diagnostic apparatus, radiation detector and output determination method," the natural assumption is that the invention is the detector. The independent claim of the patent Canon Kabushiki Kaisha had granted this week says otherwise. The hero record, US12661074B2, issued June 23, 2026, recites a plurality of radiation detection elements arranged in a two-dimensional array, but the limitations that give claim 1 its shape are not about the elements. They are about a piece of arithmetic the processing circuitry runs on the elements' outputs. That distinction, between what the title names and what the granted independent claim actually recites, is where claim-level reading earns its keep.

Claim 1 is directed to processing circuitry "configured to determine, based on a first output of a first detection element... and a second output relating to a second detection element... an output corresponding to a reconstruction position of the first detection element." The abstract states the goal of that determination plainly: the recomputed value is the output that would occur when the radiation "is entirely converted into charge at the reconstruction position." In other words, the claim is directed to correcting for the fact that when an X-ray strikes a panel at an angle, the photon's first arrival point and the place where its energy ultimately deposits charge are not the same element. The granted claim re-attributes the measured signal to where the radiation first arrived.

A radiation diagnostic apparatus according to an embodiment includes plural radiation detection elements and a processing circuitry... determines, based on a first output relating to a first detection element... and a second output relating to a second detection element, an ideal output relating to the first detection element when it is assumed that a surface at which a radiation first arrives on the first detection element is an incident position of the radiation.— Radiation diagnostic apparatus, radiation detector and output determination method, US12661074B2

Why does the weighting, rather than the detector hardware, anchor the claim? The engineering problem is geometric. A flat-panel detector built from a converter material of finite thickness presents a slanted path to any X-ray that does not arrive perpendicular to the surface. A photon entering one element near its edge can travel obliquely and convert to charge inside the adjacent element, so the count that physically registers on element B was, by first arrival, really element A's. Claim 1's answer is to compute each element's corrected output by adding a weighted share of its own raw output to a weighted share of the neighbor's. The two weights are not free parameters: the claim recites a first weight "determined according to a first angle from a reference line to the first detection element" and a second weight tied to the second element's angle, and it constrains how they are set, "based on a material that converts the radiation into any one of electron and visible light... a thickness of the material, and a first angle at which the radiation enters the first detection element, and as the first angle increases, the first weight decreases and the second weight increases." That last clause is the load-bearing limitation: the steeper the incidence, the more the correction leans on the neighbor's output, because more of the first element's true signal has migrated next door.

Where the granted patent lands in the patent landscape

The classification tells the same story as the claim. The record sits in the A61B 6/03 neighborhood, the CPC subgroup for computed-tomography apparatus, with the apparatus claims reaching toward the A61B 6/42 family, where detector construction and signal-handling details for X-ray imaging live. A61B 6 is the broad CPC group for apparatus for radiation diagnosis; the 6/03 and 6/42 ranges, where CT geometry, detector arrays, and the electronics that read them are filed, are the dense neighborhood that defines the diagnostic-imaging hardware estate. This grant is one record within that landscape, classified for the X-ray imaging-engine context rather than for image reconstruction or signal processing in the abstract. Claim 3 makes the CT framing explicit, reciting an "X-ray computed tomography apparatus" in which the two-dimensional direction is "a cone angle direction and a fan angle direction" and the corrected weights are keyed to cone angle, the out-of-slice tilt that grows toward the edges of a wide cone-beam detector.

The granted claim set extends the same correction across several axes of the imaging engine. Claim 2 specifies the arithmetic, determining the corrected value "by adding up a first multiplication value obtained by multiplying the first output by the first weight and a second multiplication value obtained by multiplying the second output by the second weight", a weighted sum, stated as such. Claims 4 through 6 carry the scheme into photon-counting detection: claim 4 recites that the outputs are "a number of counts obtained by counting photons in the X-ray," claim 5 splits those counts into "a plurality of energy bins," and claim 6 makes the weights energy-dependent, with the first weight decreasing and the second increasing "as an energy... becomes higher." That energy-bin chain is notable because it ties the geometric correction to spectral, photon-counting readout, where higher-energy photons penetrate deeper into the converter and are exactly the ones most likely to deposit charge in a neighboring element.

Two further dependents shape the edges of the claim. Claim 7 addresses physical gaps between elements, reciting that "when a gap is present between the first detection element and the second detection element, the first weight is set to be small compared to when the gap is not present," tuning the correction for the dead space between sensor cells. Claim 8 closes the loop to the image, reciting processing circuitry that performs "reconstruction processing with respect to projection data based on the output corresponding to the reconstruction position, to generate a reconstruction image." The patent also recites the invention in two further independent forms beyond the apparatus of claim 1: claim 10 is a radiation detector with data-collecting circuitry that collects counts and applies the same angle-weighted determination, and claim 11 is an output determination method reciting the same collect-and-weight steps. Apparatus, device, and method, the standard three-way spread, each carrying the same incident-position weighting limitation at its core.

What a granted patent establishes, and what it does not

The status of this record is the point a claims reading has to keep in front. US12661074B2 is an issued grant, not a pending application, which is why it resolves to a granted-patent record rather than a publication. Grant means the claims have issued and define enforceable scope as written; the independent claim recites the angle-weighted, incident-position output correction across a two-dimensional detector array, with the weights constrained by converter material, thickness, and incidence angle. What the granted claim covers is that determination scheme and its recited limitations, no more and no less. Reading the grant tells you what issued to Canon and how it is classified; this brief makes no judgment on the scope, breadth, or value of any claim, nor on how the apparatus performs in any clinical setting, which is outside what the patent record speaks to.

For an IP reader tracking the diagnostic-imaging hardware estate, the value of the record is in its specificity. The title points at a radiation detector; claim 1 points at the weighted-sum correction that re-attributes each element's output to the X-ray's first arrival point. The classification points at CT apparatus and detector construction; the dependent claims point at photon counting, energy binning, inter-element gaps, and the reconstruction step. One granted patent, three independent claim forms, and a coherent chain of limitations from the geometry of an oblique X-ray through the angle-derived weights to the reconstructed image, all now readable in the issued record as enforceable claims assigned to Canon Kabushiki Kaisha.