1. Denoising Projection Data with a Robust Adaptive Bilateral Filter in Low-Count SPECT
- Author
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Norikazu Arai, Kenshiro Shiraishi, Takashi Chikamatsu, Takao Okamoto, Takahide Okamoto, Jun'ichi Kotoku, Susumu Nakabayashi, Takenori Kobayashi, Shinobu Kumagai, and Tatsuro Kaminaga
- Subjects
Image quality ,Computer science ,business.industry ,Noise reduction ,Butterworth filter ,Filter (signal processing) ,030218 nuclear medicine & medical imaging ,03 medical and health sciences ,Noise ,0302 clinical medicine ,030220 oncology & carcinogenesis ,Spect imaging ,Computer vision ,Bilateral filter ,Artificial intelligence ,business ,Image resolution - Abstract
Low-count SPECT images are well known to be smoothed strongly by a Butterworth filter for statistical noise reduction. Reconstructed images have a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and spatial resolution because of the removal of high-frequency signal components. Using the developed robust adaptive bilateral filter (RABF), which was designed as a pre-stage filter of the Butterworth filter, this study was conducted to improve SNR without degrading the spatial resolution for low-count SPECT imaging. The filter can remove noise while preserving spatial resolution. To evaluate the proposed method, we extracted SNR and spatial resolution in a phantom study. We also conducted paired comparison for visual image quality evaluation in a clinical study. Results show that SNR was increased 1.4 times without degrading the spatial resolution. Visual image quality was improved significantly (p < 0.01) for clinical low-count data. Moreover, the accumulation structure became sharper. A structure embedded in noise emerged. Our method, which denoises without degrading the spatial resolution for low-count SPECT images, is expected to increase the effectiveness of diagnosis for low-dose scanning and short acquisition time scanning.
- Published
- 2018
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