Journal article
Scale-based diffusive image filtering preserving boundary sharpness and fine structures
IEEE transactions on medical imaging, Vol.20(11), pp.1140-1155
2001
DOI: 10.1109/42.963817
PMID: 11700740
Abstract
Image acquisition techniques often suffer from low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and/or contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR). Although many acquisition techniques are available to minimize these, post acquisition filtering is a major off-line image processing technique commonly used to improve the SNR and CNR. A major drawback of filtering is that it often diffuses/blurs important structures along with noise. In this paper, we introduce two scale-based filtering methods that use local structure size or "object scale" information to arrest smoothing around fine structures and across even low-gradient boundaries. The first of these methods uses a weighted average over a scale-dependent neighborhood while the other employs scale-dependent diffusion conductance to perform filtering. Both methods adaptively modify the degree of filtering at any image location depending on local object scale. Object scale allows us to accurately use a restricted homogeneity parameter for filtering in regions with fine details and in the vicinity of boundaries while a generous parameter in the interiors of homogeneous regions. Qualitative experiments based on both phantoms and patient magnetic resonance images show significant improvements using the scale-based methods over the extant anisotropic diffusive filtering method in preserving fine details and sharpness of object boundaries. Quantitative analyses utilizing 25 phantom images generated under a range of conditions of blurring, noise, and background variation confirm the superiority of the new scale-based approaches.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Scale-based diffusive image filtering preserving boundary sharpness and fine structures
- Creators
- Punam K SAHA - Medical Image Processing Group, Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6021, United StatesJayaram K UDUPA - Medical Image Processing Group, Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, Fourth Floor, Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Drive, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6021, United States
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- IEEE transactions on medical imaging, Vol.20(11), pp.1140-1155
- DOI
- 10.1109/42.963817
- PMID
- 11700740
- NLM abbreviation
- IEEE Trans Med Imaging
- ISSN
- 0278-0062
- eISSN
- 1558-254X
- Publisher
- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; New York, NY
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2001
- Academic Unit
- Radiology; Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Record Identifier
- 9984051747202771
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