The present disclosure a system and method for generating a tomographic image of a subject. In some aspects, the method includes receiving an initial image acquired from a subject using the tomographic imaging system, and performing, using the initial image and a cost function model, a penalty calculation based on a spatially variant hyper-parameter. The method also includes generating an updated image using the penalty calculation, and generating a finalized image by iteratively updating the updated image until a stopping criterion is met.