A method and a system for a two-step calibration method for the polychromatic semiconductor-based PCD forward counting model, to account for various pixel summing readout modes for imaging at different resolutions. The flux independent weighted bin response function is estimated using the expectation maximization method, and then used to estimate the pileup correction terms at plural tube voltage settings for each detector pixel. To correct the variation of the detector response due to different PCD sub-pixel summing schemes, the embodiments calibrate forward model parameters based on the various pixel readout modes.