A method for reconstructing image data acquired by a computed tomography system is provided. The method comprises selecting a portion of image data to be reconstructed and determining a corresponding portion of projection data. An adaptive filter is computed and applied to the portion of projection data to generate a portion of adaptively-filtered projection data. The adaptive filter is computed based upon desired quality properties of the portion of image data. Finally, the portion of image data is reconstructed based upon the portion of adaptively-filtered projection data. The step of selecting, computing and reconstructing is repeated for every pixel or group of pixels comprising the image data.