An adaptive CT data acquisition system and technique is presented whereby radiation emitted for CT data acquisition is dynamically controlled to limit exposure to those detectors of a CT detector assembly that may be particularly susceptible to saturation during a given data acquisition. The data acquisition technique recognizes that for a given subject size and position that pre-subject filtering and collimating of a radiation beam may be insufficient to completely prevent detector saturation. Therefore, the present invention includes implementation of a number of CT data correction techniques for correcting otherwise unusable data of a saturated CT detector. These data correction techniques include a nearest neighbor correction, off-centered phantom correction, off-centered synthetic data correction, scout data correction, planar radiogram correction, and a number of others. The invention is applicable with energy discriminating CT systems as well as with conventional CT systems and other multi-energy CT systems, such as dual kVp-based systems.