Image denoising in mixed Poisson-Gaussian noise.

PubMed

Luisier, Florian; Blu, Thierry; Unser, Michael

2011-03-01

We propose a general methodology (PURE-LET) to design and optimize a wide class of transform-domain thresholding algorithms for denoising images corrupted by mixed Poisson-Gaussian noise. We express the denoising process as a linear expansion of thresholds (LET) that we optimize by relying on a purely data-adaptive unbiased estimate of the mean-squared error (MSE), derived in a non-Bayesian framework (PURE: Poisson-Gaussian unbiased risk estimate). We provide a practical approximation of this theoretical MSE estimate for the tractable optimization of arbitrary transform-domain thresholding. We then propose a pointwise estimator for undecimated filterbank transforms, which consists of subband-adaptive thresholding functions with signal-dependent thresholds that are globally optimized in the image domain. We finally demonstrate the potential of the proposed approach through extensive comparisons with state-of-the-art techniques that are specifically tailored to the estimation of Poisson intensities. We also present denoising results obtained on real images of low-count fluorescence microscopy.

Wavelet-domain de-noising of OCT images of human brain malignant glioma

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dolganova, I. N.; Aleksandrova, P. V.; Beshplav, S.-I. T.; Chernomyrdin, N. V.; Dubyanskaya, E. N.; Goryaynov, S. A.; Kurlov, V. N.; Reshetov, I. V.; Potapov, A. A.; Tuchin, V. V.; Zaytsev, K. I.

2018-04-01

We have proposed a wavelet-domain de-noising technique for imaging of human brain malignant glioma by optical coherence tomography (OCT). It implies OCT image decomposition using the direct fast wavelet transform, thresholding of the obtained wavelet spectrum and further inverse fast wavelet transform for image reconstruction. By selecting both wavelet basis and thresholding procedure, we have found an optimal wavelet filter, which application improves differentiation of the considered brain tissue classes - i.e. malignant glioma and normal/intact tissue. Namely, it allows reducing the scattering noise in the OCT images and retaining signal decrement for each tissue class. Therefore, the observed results reveals the wavelet-domain de-noising as a prospective tool for improved characterization of biological tissue using the OCT.

Fractional order integration and fuzzy logic based filter for denoising of echocardiographic image.

PubMed

Saadia, Ayesha; Rashdi, Adnan

2016-12-01

Ultrasound is widely used for imaging due to its cost effectiveness and safety feature. However, ultrasound images are inherently corrupted with speckle noise which severely affects the quality of these images and create difficulty for physicians in diagnosis. To get maximum benefit from ultrasound imaging, image denoising is an essential requirement. To perform image denoising, a two stage methodology using fuzzy weighted mean and fractional integration filter has been proposed in this research work. In stage-1, image pixels are processed by applying a 3 × 3 window around each pixel and fuzzy logic is used to assign weights to the pixels in each window, replacing central pixel of the window with weighted mean of all neighboring pixels present in the same window. Noise suppression is achieved by assigning weights to the pixels while preserving edges and other important features of an image. In stage-2, the resultant image is further improved by fractional order integration filter. Effectiveness of the proposed methodology has been analyzed for standard test images artificially corrupted with speckle noise and real ultrasound B-mode images. Results of the proposed technique have been compared with different state-of-the-art techniques including Lsmv, Wiener, Geometric filter, Bilateral, Non-local means, Wavelet, Perona et al., Total variation (TV), Global Adaptive Fractional Integral Algorithm (GAFIA) and Improved Fractional Order Differential (IFD) model. Comparison has been done on quantitative and qualitative basis. For quantitative analysis different metrics like Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR), Speckle Suppression Index (SSI), Structural Similarity (SSIM), Edge Preservation Index (β) and Correlation Coefficient (ρ) have been used. Simulations have been done using Matlab. Simulation results of artificially corrupted standard test images and two real Echocardiographic images reveal that the proposed method outperforms existing image denoising techniques reported in the literature. The proposed method for denoising of Echocardiographic images is effective in noise suppression/removal. It not only removes noise from an image but also preserves edges and other important structure. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Wavelet denoising during optical coherence tomography of the prostate nerves using the complex wavelet transform.

PubMed

Chitchian, Shahab; Fiddy, Michael; Fried, Nathaniel M

2008-01-01

Preservation of the cavernous nerves during prostate cancer surgery is critical in preserving sexual function after surgery. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) of the prostate nerves has recently been studied for potential use in nerve-sparing prostate surgery. In this study, the discrete wavelet transform and complex dual-tree wavelet transform are implemented for wavelet shrinkage denoising in OCT images of the rat prostate. Applying the complex dual-tree wavelet transform provides improved results for speckle noise reduction in the OCT prostate image. Image quality metrics of the cavernous nerves and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) were improved significantly using this complex wavelet denoising technique.

Automated wavelet denoising of photoacoustic signals for circulating melanoma cell detection and burn image reconstruction.

PubMed

Holan, Scott H; Viator, John A

2008-06-21

Photoacoustic image reconstruction may involve hundreds of point measurements, each of which contributes unique information about the subsurface absorbing structures under study. For backprojection imaging, two or more point measurements of photoacoustic waves induced by irradiating a biological sample with laser light are used to produce an image of the acoustic source. Each of these measurements must undergo some signal processing, such as denoising or system deconvolution. In order to process the numerous signals, we have developed an automated wavelet algorithm for denoising signals. We appeal to the discrete wavelet transform for denoising photoacoustic signals generated in a dilute melanoma cell suspension and in thermally coagulated blood. We used 5, 9, 45 and 270 melanoma cells in the laser beam path as test concentrations. For the burn phantom, we used coagulated blood in 1.6 mm silicon tube submerged in Intralipid. Although these two targets were chosen as typical applications for photoacoustic detection and imaging, they are of independent interest. The denoising employs level-independent universal thresholding. In order to accommodate nonradix-2 signals, we considered a maximal overlap discrete wavelet transform (MODWT). For the lower melanoma cell concentrations, as the signal-to-noise ratio approached 1, denoising allowed better peak finding. For coagulated blood, the signals were denoised to yield a clean photoacoustic resulting in an improvement of 22% in the reconstructed image. The entire signal processing technique was automated so that minimal user intervention was needed to reconstruct the images. Such an algorithm may be used for image reconstruction and signal extraction for applications such as burn depth imaging, depth profiling of vascular lesions in skin and the detection of single cancer cells in blood samples.

Edge Preserved Speckle Noise Reduction Using Integrated Fuzzy Filters

PubMed Central

Dewal, M. L.; Rohit, Manoj Kumar

2014-01-01

Echocardiographic images are inherent with speckle noise which makes visual reading and analysis quite difficult. The multiplicative speckle noise masks finer details, necessary for diagnosis of abnormalities. A novel speckle reduction technique based on integration of geometric, wiener, and fuzzy filters is proposed and analyzed in this paper. The denoising applications of fuzzy filters are studied and analyzed along with 26 denoising techniques. It is observed that geometric filter retains noise and, to address this issue, wiener filter is embedded into the geometric filter during iteration process. The performance of geometric-wiener filter is further enhanced using fuzzy filters and the proposed despeckling techniques are called integrated fuzzy filters. Fuzzy filters based on moving average and median value are employed in the integrated fuzzy filters. The performances of integrated fuzzy filters are tested on echocardiographic images and synthetic images in terms of image quality metrics. It is observed that the performance parameters are highest in case of integrated fuzzy filters in comparison to fuzzy and geometric-fuzzy filters. The clinical validation reveals that the output images obtained using geometric-wiener, integrated fuzzy, nonlocal means, and details preserving anisotropic diffusion filters are acceptable. The necessary finer details are retained in the denoised echocardiographic images. PMID:27437499

Fully Convolutional Architecture for Low-Dose CT Image Noise Reduction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Badretale, S.; Shaker, F.; Babyn, P.; Alirezaie, J.

2017-10-01

One of the critical topics in medical low-dose Computed Tomography (CT) imaging is how best to maintain image quality. As the quality of images decreases with lowering the X-ray radiation dose, improving image quality is extremely important and challenging. We have proposed a novel approach to denoise low-dose CT images. Our algorithm learns directly from an end-to-end mapping from the low-dose Computed Tomography images for denoising the normal-dose CT images. Our method is based on a deep convolutional neural network with rectified linear units. By learning various low-level to high-level features from a low-dose image the proposed algorithm is capable of creating a high-quality denoised image. We demonstrate the superiority of our technique by comparing the results with two other state-of-the-art methods in terms of the peak signal to noise ratio, root mean square error, and a structural similarity index.

Wavelet median denoising of ultrasound images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Macey, Katherine E.; Page, Wyatt H.

2002-05-01

Ultrasound images are contaminated with both additive and multiplicative noise, which is modeled by Gaussian and speckle noise respectively. Distinguishing small features such as fallopian tubes in the female genital tract in the noisy environment is problematic. A new method for noise reduction, Wavelet Median Denoising, is presented. Wavelet Median Denoising consists of performing a standard noise reduction technique, median filtering, in the wavelet domain. The new method is tested on 126 images, comprised of 9 original images each with 14 levels of Gaussian or speckle noise. Results for both separable and non-separable wavelets are evaluated, relative to soft-thresholding in the wavelet domain, using the signal-to-noise ratio and subjective assessment. The performance of Wavelet Median Denoising is comparable to that of soft-thresholding. Both methods are more successful in removing Gaussian noise than speckle noise. Wavelet Median Denoising outperforms soft-thresholding for a larger number of cases of speckle noise reduction than of Gaussian noise reduction. Noise reduction is more successful using non-separable wavelets than separable wavelets. When both methods are applied to ultrasound images obtained from a phantom of the female genital tract a small improvement is seen; however, a substantial improvement is required prior to clinical use.

Looking for the Signal: A guide to iterative noise and artefact removal in X-ray tomographic reconstructions of porous geomaterials

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bruns, S.; Stipp, S. L. S.; Sørensen, H. O.

2017-07-01

X-ray micro- and nanotomography has evolved into a quantitative analysis tool rather than a mere qualitative visualization technique for the study of porous natural materials. Tomographic reconstructions are subject to noise that has to be handled by image filters prior to quantitative analysis. Typically, denoising filters are designed to handle random noise, such as Gaussian or Poisson noise. In tomographic reconstructions, noise has been projected from Radon space to Euclidean space, i.e. post reconstruction noise cannot be expected to be random but to be correlated. Reconstruction artefacts, such as streak or ring artefacts, aggravate the filtering process so algorithms performing well with random noise are not guaranteed to provide satisfactory results for X-ray tomography reconstructions. With sufficient image resolution, the crystalline origin of most geomaterials results in tomography images of objects that are untextured. We developed a denoising framework for these kinds of samples that combines a noise level estimate with iterative nonlocal means denoising. This allows splitting the denoising task into several weak denoising subtasks where the later filtering steps provide a controlled level of texture removal. We describe a hands-on explanation for the use of this iterative denoising approach and the validity and quality of the image enhancement filter was evaluated in a benchmarking experiment with noise footprints of a varying level of correlation and residual artefacts. They were extracted from real tomography reconstructions. We found that our denoising solutions were superior to other denoising algorithms, over a broad range of contrast-to-noise ratios on artificial piecewise constant signals.

Beyond a Gaussian Denoiser: Residual Learning of Deep CNN for Image Denoising.

PubMed

Zhang, Kai; Zuo, Wangmeng; Chen, Yunjin; Meng, Deyu; Zhang, Lei

2017-07-01

The discriminative model learning for image denoising has been recently attracting considerable attentions due to its favorable denoising performance. In this paper, we take one step forward by investigating the construction of feed-forward denoising convolutional neural networks (DnCNNs) to embrace the progress in very deep architecture, learning algorithm, and regularization method into image denoising. Specifically, residual learning and batch normalization are utilized to speed up the training process as well as boost the denoising performance. Different from the existing discriminative denoising models which usually train a specific model for additive white Gaussian noise at a certain noise level, our DnCNN model is able to handle Gaussian denoising with unknown noise level (i.e., blind Gaussian denoising). With the residual learning strategy, DnCNN implicitly removes the latent clean image in the hidden layers. This property motivates us to train a single DnCNN model to tackle with several general image denoising tasks, such as Gaussian denoising, single image super-resolution, and JPEG image deblocking. Our extensive experiments demonstrate that our DnCNN model can not only exhibit high effectiveness in several general image denoising tasks, but also be efficiently implemented by benefiting from GPU computing.

Deep Marginalized Sparse Denoising Auto-Encoder for Image Denoising

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ma, Hongqiang; Ma, Shiping; Xu, Yuelei; Zhu, Mingming

2018-01-01

Stacked Sparse Denoising Auto-Encoder (SSDA) has been successfully applied to image denoising. As a deep network, the SSDA network with powerful data feature learning ability is superior to the traditional image denoising algorithms. However, the algorithm has high computational complexity and slow convergence rate in the training. To address this limitation, we present a method of image denoising based on Deep Marginalized Sparse Denoising Auto-Encoder (DMSDA). The loss function of Sparse Denoising Auto-Encoder is marginalized so that it satisfies both sparseness and marginality. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can not only outperform SSDA in the convergence speed and training time, but also has better denoising performance than the current excellent denoising algorithms, including both the subjective and objective evaluation of image denoising.

Fast and Accurate Poisson Denoising With Trainable Nonlinear Diffusion.

PubMed

Feng, Wensen; Qiao, Peng; Chen, Yunjin; Wensen Feng; Peng Qiao; Yunjin Chen; Feng, Wensen; Chen, Yunjin; Qiao, Peng

2018-06-01

The degradation of the acquired signal by Poisson noise is a common problem for various imaging applications, such as medical imaging, night vision, and microscopy. Up to now, many state-of-the-art Poisson denoising techniques mainly concentrate on achieving utmost performance, with little consideration for the computation efficiency. Therefore, in this paper we aim to propose an efficient Poisson denoising model with both high computational efficiency and recovery quality. To this end, we exploit the newly developed trainable nonlinear reaction diffusion (TNRD) model which has proven an extremely fast image restoration approach with performance surpassing recent state-of-the-arts. However, the straightforward direct gradient descent employed in the original TNRD-based denoising task is not applicable in this paper. To solve this problem, we resort to the proximal gradient descent method. We retrain the model parameters, including the linear filters and influence functions by taking into account the Poisson noise statistics, and end up with a well-trained nonlinear diffusion model specialized for Poisson denoising. The trained model provides strongly competitive results against state-of-the-art approaches, meanwhile bearing the properties of simple structure and high efficiency. Furthermore, our proposed model comes along with an additional advantage, that the diffusion process is well-suited for parallel computation on graphics processing units (GPUs). For images of size , our GPU implementation takes less than 0.1 s to produce state-of-the-art Poisson denoising performance.

Effect of denoising on supervised lung parenchymal clusters

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jayamani, Padmapriya; Raghunath, Sushravya; Rajagopalan, Srinivasan; Karwoski, Ronald A.; Bartholmai, Brian J.; Robb, Richard A.

2012-03-01

Denoising is a critical preconditioning step for quantitative analysis of medical images. Despite promises for more consistent diagnosis, denoising techniques are seldom explored in clinical settings. While this may be attributed to the esoteric nature of the parameter sensitve algorithms, lack of quantitative measures on their ecacy to enhance the clinical decision making is a primary cause of physician apathy. This paper addresses this issue by exploring the eect of denoising on the integrity of supervised lung parenchymal clusters. Multiple Volumes of Interests (VOIs) were selected across multiple high resolution CT scans to represent samples of dierent patterns (normal, emphysema, ground glass, honey combing and reticular). The VOIs were labeled through consensus of four radiologists. The original datasets were ltered by multiple denoising techniques (median ltering, anisotropic diusion, bilateral ltering and non-local means) and the corresponding ltered VOIs were extracted. Plurality of cluster indices based on multiple histogram-based pair-wise similarity measures were used to assess the quality of supervised clusters in the original and ltered space. The resultant rank orders were analyzed using the Borda criteria to nd the denoising-similarity measure combination that has the best cluster quality. Our exhaustive analyis reveals (a) for a number of similarity measures, the cluster quality is inferior in the ltered space; and (b) for measures that benet from denoising, a simple median ltering outperforms non-local means and bilateral ltering. Our study suggests the need to judiciously choose, if required, a denoising technique that does not deteriorate the integrity of supervised clusters.

Sparse representations via learned dictionaries for x-ray angiogram image denoising

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shang, Jingfan; Huang, Zhenghua; Li, Qian; Zhang, Tianxu

2018-03-01

X-ray angiogram image denoising is always an active research topic in the field of computer vision. In particular, the denoising performance of many existing methods had been greatly improved by the widely use of nonlocal similar patches. However, the only nonlocal self-similar (NSS) patch-based methods can be still be improved and extended. In this paper, we propose an image denoising model based on the sparsity of the NSS patches to obtain high denoising performance and high-quality image. In order to represent the sparsely NSS patches in every location of the image well and solve the image denoising model more efficiently, we obtain dictionaries as a global image prior by the K-SVD algorithm over the processing image; Then the single and effectively alternating directions method of multipliers (ADMM) method is used to solve the image denoising model. The results of widely synthetic experiments demonstrate that, owing to learned dictionaries by K-SVD algorithm, a sparsely augmented lagrangian image denoising (SALID) model, which perform effectively, obtains a state-of-the-art denoising performance and better high-quality images. Moreover, we also give some denoising results of clinical X-ray angiogram images.

Retinal optical coherence tomography image enhancement via shrinkage denoising using double-density dual-tree complex wavelet transform

PubMed Central

Mayer, Markus A.; Boretsky, Adam R.; van Kuijk, Frederik J.; Motamedi, Massoud

2012-01-01

Abstract. Image enhancement of retinal structures, in optical coherence tomography (OCT) scans through denoising, has the potential to aid in the diagnosis of several eye diseases. In this paper, a locally adaptive denoising algorithm using double-density dual-tree complex wavelet transform, a combination of the double-density wavelet transform and the dual-tree complex wavelet transform, is applied to reduce speckle noise in OCT images of the retina. The algorithm overcomes the limitations of commonly used multiple frame averaging technique, namely the limited number of frames that can be recorded due to eye movements, by providing a comparable image quality in significantly less acquisition time equal to an order of magnitude less time compared to the averaging method. In addition, improvements of image quality metrics and 5 dB increase in the signal-to-noise ratio are attained. PMID:23117804

Retinal optical coherence tomography image enhancement via shrinkage denoising using double-density dual-tree complex wavelet transform.

PubMed

Chitchian, Shahab; Mayer, Markus A; Boretsky, Adam R; van Kuijk, Frederik J; Motamedi, Massoud

2012-11-01

ABSTRACT. Image enhancement of retinal structures, in optical coherence tomography (OCT) scans through denoising, has the potential to aid in the diagnosis of several eye diseases. In this paper, a locally adaptive denoising algorithm using double-density dual-tree complex wavelet transform, a combination of the double-density wavelet transform and the dual-tree complex wavelet transform, is applied to reduce speckle noise in OCT images of the retina. The algorithm overcomes the limitations of commonly used multiple frame averaging technique, namely the limited number of frames that can be recorded due to eye movements, by providing a comparable image quality in significantly less acquisition time equal to an order of magnitude less time compared to the averaging method. In addition, improvements of image quality metrics and 5 dB increase in the signal-to-noise ratio are attained.

Using wavelet denoising and mathematical morphology in the segmentation technique applied to blood cells images.

PubMed

Boix, Macarena; Cantó, Begoña

2013-04-01

Accurate image segmentation is used in medical diagnosis since this technique is a noninvasive pre-processing step for biomedical treatment. In this work we present an efficient segmentation method for medical image analysis. In particular, with this method blood cells can be segmented. For that, we combine the wavelet transform with morphological operations. Moreover, the wavelet thresholding technique is used to eliminate the noise and prepare the image for suitable segmentation. In wavelet denoising we determine the best wavelet that shows a segmentation with the largest area in the cell. We study different wavelet families and we conclude that the wavelet db1 is the best and it can serve for posterior works on blood pathologies. The proposed method generates goods results when it is applied on several images. Finally, the proposed algorithm made in MatLab environment is verified for a selected blood cells.

Fast Acquisition and Reconstruction of Optical Coherence Tomography Images via Sparse Representation

PubMed Central

Li, Shutao; McNabb, Ryan P.; Nie, Qing; Kuo, Anthony N.; Toth, Cynthia A.; Izatt, Joseph A.; Farsiu, Sina

2014-01-01

In this paper, we present a novel technique, based on compressive sensing principles, for reconstruction and enhancement of multi-dimensional image data. Our method is a major improvement and generalization of the multi-scale sparsity based tomographic denoising (MSBTD) algorithm we recently introduced for reducing speckle noise. Our new technique exhibits several advantages over MSBTD, including its capability to simultaneously reduce noise and interpolate missing data. Unlike MSBTD, our new method does not require an a priori high-quality image from the target imaging subject and thus offers the potential to shorten clinical imaging sessions. This novel image restoration method, which we termed sparsity based simultaneous denoising and interpolation (SBSDI), utilizes sparse representation dictionaries constructed from previously collected datasets. We tested the SBSDI algorithm on retinal spectral domain optical coherence tomography images captured in the clinic. Experiments showed that the SBSDI algorithm qualitatively and quantitatively outperforms other state-of-the-art methods. PMID:23846467

An enhanced approach for biomedical image restoration using image fusion techniques

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Karam, Ghada Sabah; Abbas, Fatma Ismail; Abood, Ziad M.; Kadhim, Kadhim K.; Karam, Nada S.

2018-05-01

Biomedical image is generally noisy and little blur due to the physical mechanisms of the acquisition process, so one of the common degradations in biomedical image is their noise and poor contrast. The idea of biomedical image enhancement is to improve the quality of the image for early diagnosis. In this paper we are using Wavelet Transformation to remove the Gaussian noise from biomedical images: Positron Emission Tomography (PET) image and Radiography (Radio) image, in different color spaces (RGB, HSV, YCbCr), and we perform the fusion of the denoised images resulting from the above denoising techniques using add image method. Then some quantive performance metrics such as signal -to -noise ratio (SNR), peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), and Mean Square Error (MSE), etc. are computed. Since this statistical measurement helps in the assessment of fidelity and image quality. The results showed that our approach can be applied of Image types of color spaces for biomedical images.

Denoising and segmentation of retinal layers in optical coherence tomography images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dash, Puspita; Sigappi, A. N.

2018-04-01

Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is an imaging technique used to localize the intra-retinal boundaries for the diagnostics of macular diseases. Due to speckle noise, low image contrast and accurate segmentation of individual retinal layers is difficult. Due to this, a method for retinal layer segmentation from OCT images is presented. This paper proposes a pre-processing filtering approach for denoising and segmentation methods for segmenting retinal layers OCT images using graph based segmentation technique. These techniques are used for segmentation of retinal layers for normal as well as patients with Diabetic Macular Edema. The algorithm based on gradient information and shortest path search is applied to optimize the edge selection. In this paper the four main layers of the retina are segmented namely Internal limiting membrane (ILM), Retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), Inner nuclear layer (INL) and Outer nuclear layer (ONL). The proposed method is applied on a database of OCT images of both ten normal and twenty DME affected patients and the results are found to be promising.

A hybrid algorithm for speckle noise reduction of ultrasound images.

PubMed

Singh, Karamjeet; Ranade, Sukhjeet Kaur; Singh, Chandan

2017-09-01

Medical images are contaminated by multiplicative speckle noise which significantly reduce the contrast of ultrasound images and creates a negative effect on various image interpretation tasks. In this paper, we proposed a hybrid denoising approach which collaborate the both local and nonlocal information in an efficient manner. The proposed hybrid algorithm consist of three stages in which at first stage the use of local statistics in the form of guided filter is used to reduce the effect of speckle noise initially. Then, an improved speckle reducing bilateral filter (SRBF) is developed to further reduce the speckle noise from the medical images. Finally, to reconstruct the diffused edges we have used the efficient post-processing technique which jointly considered the advantages of both bilateral and nonlocal mean (NLM) filter for the attenuation of speckle noise efficiently. The performance of proposed hybrid algorithm is evaluated on synthetic, simulated and real ultrasound images. The experiments conducted on various test images demonstrate that our proposed hybrid approach outperforms the various traditional speckle reduction approaches included recently proposed NLM and optimized Bayesian-based NLM. The results of various quantitative, qualitative measures and by visual inspection of denoise synthetic and real ultrasound images demonstrate that the proposed hybrid algorithm have strong denoising capability and able to preserve the fine image details such as edge of a lesion better than previously developed methods for speckle noise reduction. The denoising and edge preserving capability of hybrid algorithm is far better than existing traditional and recently proposed speckle reduction (SR) filters. The success of proposed algorithm would help in building the lay foundation for inventing the hybrid algorithms for denoising of ultrasound images. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Image denoising by exploring external and internal correlations.

PubMed

Yue, Huanjing; Sun, Xiaoyan; Yang, Jingyu; Wu, Feng

2015-06-01

Single image denoising suffers from limited data collection within a noisy image. In this paper, we propose a novel image denoising scheme, which explores both internal and external correlations with the help of web images. For each noisy patch, we build internal and external data cubes by finding similar patches from the noisy and web images, respectively. We then propose reducing noise by a two-stage strategy using different filtering approaches. In the first stage, since the noisy patch may lead to inaccurate patch selection, we propose a graph based optimization method to improve patch matching accuracy in external denoising. The internal denoising is frequency truncation on internal cubes. By combining the internal and external denoising patches, we obtain a preliminary denoising result. In the second stage, we propose reducing noise by filtering of external and internal cubes, respectively, on transform domain. In this stage, the preliminary denoising result not only enhances the patch matching accuracy but also provides reliable estimates of filtering parameters. The final denoising image is obtained by fusing the external and internal filtering results. Experimental results show that our method constantly outperforms state-of-the-art denoising schemes in both subjective and objective quality measurements, e.g., it achieves >2 dB gain compared with BM3D at a wide range of noise levels.

A novel partial volume effects correction technique integrating deconvolution associated with denoising within an iterative PET image reconstruction

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Merlin, Thibaut, E-mail: thibaut.merlin@telecom-bretagne.eu; Visvikis, Dimitris; Fernandez, Philippe

2015-02-15

Purpose: Partial volume effect (PVE) plays an important role in both qualitative and quantitative PET image accuracy, especially for small structures. A previously proposed voxelwise PVE correction method applied on PET reconstructed images involves the use of Lucy–Richardson deconvolution incorporating wavelet-based denoising to limit the associated propagation of noise. The aim of this study is to incorporate the deconvolution, coupled with the denoising step, directly inside the iterative reconstruction process to further improve PVE correction. Methods: The list-mode ordered subset expectation maximization (OSEM) algorithm has been modified accordingly with the application of the Lucy–Richardson deconvolution algorithm to the current estimationmore » of the image, at each reconstruction iteration. Acquisitions of the NEMA NU2-2001 IQ phantom were performed on a GE DRX PET/CT system to study the impact of incorporating the deconvolution inside the reconstruction [with and without the point spread function (PSF) model] in comparison to its application postreconstruction and to standard iterative reconstruction incorporating the PSF model. The impact of the denoising step was also evaluated. Images were semiquantitatively assessed by studying the trade-off between the intensity recovery and the noise level in the background estimated as relative standard deviation. Qualitative assessments of the developed methods were additionally performed on clinical cases. Results: Incorporating the deconvolution without denoising within the reconstruction achieved superior intensity recovery in comparison to both standard OSEM reconstruction integrating a PSF model and application of the deconvolution algorithm in a postreconstruction process. The addition of the denoising step permitted to limit the SNR degradation while preserving the intensity recovery. Conclusions: This study demonstrates the feasibility of incorporating the Lucy–Richardson deconvolution associated with a wavelet-based denoising in the reconstruction process to better correct for PVE. Future work includes further evaluations of the proposed method on clinical datasets and the use of improved PSF models.« less

Denoising the Speaking Brain: Toward a Robust Technique for Correcting Artifact-Contaminated fMRI Data under Severe Motion

PubMed Central

Xu, Yisheng; Tong, Yunxia; Liu, Siyuan; Chow, Ho Ming; AbdulSabur, Nuria Y.; Mattay, Govind S.; Braun, Allen R.

2014-01-01

A comprehensive set of methods based on spatial independent component analysis (sICA) is presented as a robust technique for artifact removal, applicable to a broad range of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments that have been plagued by motion-related artifacts. Although the applications of sICA for fMRI denoising have been studied previously, three fundamental elements of this approach have not been established as follows: 1) a mechanistically-based ground truth for component classification; 2) a general framework for evaluating the performance and generalizability of automated classifiers; 3) a reliable method for validating the effectiveness of denoising. Here we perform a thorough investigation of these issues and demonstrate the power of our technique by resolving the problem of severe imaging artifacts associated with continuous overt speech production. As a key methodological feature, a dual-mask sICA method is proposed to isolate a variety of imaging artifacts by directly revealing their extracerebral spatial origins. It also plays an important role for understanding the mechanistic properties of noise components in conjunction with temporal measures of physical or physiological motion. The potentials of a spatially-based machine learning classifier and the general criteria for feature selection have both been examined, in order to maximize the performance and generalizability of automated component classification. The effectiveness of denoising is quantitatively validated by comparing the activation maps of fMRI with those of positron emission tomography acquired under the same task conditions. The general applicability of this technique is further demonstrated by the successful reduction of distance-dependent effect of head motion on resting-state functional connectivity. PMID:25225001

Denoising the speaking brain: toward a robust technique for correcting artifact-contaminated fMRI data under severe motion.

PubMed

Xu, Yisheng; Tong, Yunxia; Liu, Siyuan; Chow, Ho Ming; AbdulSabur, Nuria Y; Mattay, Govind S; Braun, Allen R

2014-12-01

A comprehensive set of methods based on spatial independent component analysis (sICA) is presented as a robust technique for artifact removal, applicable to a broad range of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiments that have been plagued by motion-related artifacts. Although the applications of sICA for fMRI denoising have been studied previously, three fundamental elements of this approach have not been established as follows: 1) a mechanistically-based ground truth for component classification; 2) a general framework for evaluating the performance and generalizability of automated classifiers; and 3) a reliable method for validating the effectiveness of denoising. Here we perform a thorough investigation of these issues and demonstrate the power of our technique by resolving the problem of severe imaging artifacts associated with continuous overt speech production. As a key methodological feature, a dual-mask sICA method is proposed to isolate a variety of imaging artifacts by directly revealing their extracerebral spatial origins. It also plays an important role for understanding the mechanistic properties of noise components in conjunction with temporal measures of physical or physiological motion. The potentials of a spatially-based machine learning classifier and the general criteria for feature selection have both been examined, in order to maximize the performance and generalizability of automated component classification. The effectiveness of denoising is quantitatively validated by comparing the activation maps of fMRI with those of positron emission tomography acquired under the same task conditions. The general applicability of this technique is further demonstrated by the successful reduction of distance-dependent effect of head motion on resting-state functional connectivity. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Wavelet-based multicomponent denoising on GPU to improve the classification of hyperspectral images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Quesada-Barriuso, Pablo; Heras, Dora B.; Argüello, Francisco; Mouriño, J. C.

2017-10-01

Supervised classification allows handling a wide range of remote sensing hyperspectral applications. Enhancing the spatial organization of the pixels over the image has proven to be beneficial for the interpretation of the image content, thus increasing the classification accuracy. Denoising in the spatial domain of the image has been shown as a technique that enhances the structures in the image. This paper proposes a multi-component denoising approach in order to increase the classification accuracy when a classification method is applied. It is computed on multicore CPUs and NVIDIA GPUs. The method combines feature extraction based on a 1Ddiscrete wavelet transform (DWT) applied in the spectral dimension followed by an Extended Morphological Profile (EMP) and a classifier (SVM or ELM). The multi-component noise reduction is applied to the EMP just before the classification. The denoising recursively applies a separable 2D DWT after which the number of wavelet coefficients is reduced by using a threshold. Finally, inverse 2D-DWT filters are applied to reconstruct the noise free original component. The computational cost of the classifiers as well as the cost of the whole classification chain is high but it is reduced achieving real-time behavior for some applications through their computation on NVIDIA multi-GPU platforms.

Evolutionary Fuzzy Block-Matching-Based Camera Raw Image Denoising.

PubMed

Yang, Chin-Chang; Guo, Shu-Mei; Tsai, Jason Sheng-Hong

2017-09-01

An evolutionary fuzzy block-matching-based image denoising algorithm is proposed to remove noise from a camera raw image. Recently, a variance stabilization transform is widely used to stabilize the noise variance, so that a Gaussian denoising algorithm can be used to remove the signal-dependent noise in camera sensors. However, in the stabilized domain, the existed denoising algorithm may blur too much detail. To provide a better estimate of the noise-free signal, a new block-matching approach is proposed to find similar blocks by the use of a type-2 fuzzy logic system (FLS). Then, these similar blocks are averaged with the weightings which are determined by the FLS. Finally, an efficient differential evolution is used to further improve the performance of the proposed denoising algorithm. The experimental results show that the proposed denoising algorithm effectively improves the performance of image denoising. Furthermore, the average performance of the proposed method is better than those of two state-of-the-art image denoising algorithms in subjective and objective measures.

2D biological representations with reduced speckle obtained from two perpendicular ultrasonic arrays.

PubMed

Rodriguez-Hernandez, Miguel A; Gomez-Sacristan, Angel; Sempere-Payá, Víctor M

2016-04-29

Ultrasound diagnosis is a widely used medical tool. Among the various ultrasound techniques, ultrasonic imaging is particularly relevant. This paper presents an improvement to a two-dimensional (2D) ultrasonic system using measurements taken from perpendicular planes, where digital signal processing techniques are used to combine one-dimensional (1D) A-scans were acquired by individual transducers in arrays located in perpendicular planes. An algorithm used to combine measurements is improved based on the wavelet transform, which includes a denoising step during the 2D representation generation process. The inclusion of this new denoising stage generates higher quality 2D representations with a reduced level of speckling. The paper includes different 2D representations obtained from noisy A-scans and compares the improvements obtained by including the denoising stage.

Learning implicit brain MRI manifolds with deep learning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bermudez, Camilo; Plassard, Andrew J.; Davis, Larry T.; Newton, Allen T.; Resnick, Susan M.; Landman, Bennett A.

2018-03-01

An important task in image processing and neuroimaging is to extract quantitative information from the acquired images in order to make observations about the presence of disease or markers of development in populations. Having a low-dimensional manifold of an image allows for easier statistical comparisons between groups and the synthesis of group representatives. Previous studies have sought to identify the best mapping of brain MRI to a low-dimensional manifold, but have been limited by assumptions of explicit similarity measures. In this work, we use deep learning techniques to investigate implicit manifolds of normal brains and generate new, high-quality images. We explore implicit manifolds by addressing the problems of image synthesis and image denoising as important tools in manifold learning. First, we propose the unsupervised synthesis of T1-weighted brain MRI using a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) by learning from 528 examples of 2D axial slices of brain MRI. Synthesized images were first shown to be unique by performing a cross-correlation with the training set. Real and synthesized images were then assessed in a blinded manner by two imaging experts providing an image quality score of 1-5. The quality score of the synthetic image showed substantial overlap with that of the real images. Moreover, we use an autoencoder with skip connections for image denoising, showing that the proposed method results in higher PSNR than FSL SUSAN after denoising. This work shows the power of artificial networks to synthesize realistic imaging data, which can be used to improve image processing techniques and provide a quantitative framework to structural changes in the brain.

External Prior Guided Internal Prior Learning for Real-World Noisy Image Denoising

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xu, Jun; Zhang, Lei; Zhang, David

2018-06-01

Most of existing image denoising methods learn image priors from either external data or the noisy image itself to remove noise. However, priors learned from external data may not be adaptive to the image to be denoised, while priors learned from the given noisy image may not be accurate due to the interference of corrupted noise. Meanwhile, the noise in real-world noisy images is very complex, which is hard to be described by simple distributions such as Gaussian distribution, making real noisy image denoising a very challenging problem. We propose to exploit the information in both external data and the given noisy image, and develop an external prior guided internal prior learning method for real noisy image denoising. We first learn external priors from an independent set of clean natural images. With the aid of learned external priors, we then learn internal priors from the given noisy image to refine the prior model. The external and internal priors are formulated as a set of orthogonal dictionaries to efficiently reconstruct the desired image. Extensive experiments are performed on several real noisy image datasets. The proposed method demonstrates highly competitive denoising performance, outperforming state-of-the-art denoising methods including those designed for real noisy images.

Enhancement of low light level images using color-plus-mono dual camera.

PubMed

Jung, Yong Ju

2017-05-15

In digital photography, the improvement of imaging quality in low light shooting is one of the users' needs. Unfortunately, conventional smartphone cameras that use a single, small image sensor cannot provide satisfactory quality in low light level images. A color-plus-mono dual camera that consists of two horizontally separate image sensors, which simultaneously captures both a color and mono image pair of the same scene, could be useful for improving the quality of low light level images. However, an incorrect image fusion between the color and mono image pair could also have negative effects, such as the introduction of severe visual artifacts in the fused images. This paper proposes a selective image fusion technique that applies an adaptive guided filter-based denoising and selective detail transfer to only those pixels deemed reliable with respect to binocular image fusion. We employ a dissimilarity measure and binocular just-noticeable-difference (BJND) analysis to identify unreliable pixels that are likely to cause visual artifacts during image fusion via joint color image denoising and detail transfer from the mono image. By constructing an experimental system of color-plus-mono camera, we demonstrate that the BJND-aware denoising and selective detail transfer is helpful in improving the image quality during low light shooting.

A new method for fusion, denoising and enhancement of x-ray images retrieved from Talbot-Lau grating interferometry.

PubMed

Scholkmann, Felix; Revol, Vincent; Kaufmann, Rolf; Baronowski, Heidrun; Kottler, Christian

2014-03-21

This paper introduces a new image denoising, fusion and enhancement framework for combining and optimal visualization of x-ray attenuation contrast (AC), differential phase contrast (DPC) and dark-field contrast (DFC) images retrieved from x-ray Talbot-Lau grating interferometry. The new image fusion framework comprises three steps: (i) denoising each input image (AC, DPC and DFC) through adaptive Wiener filtering, (ii) performing a two-step image fusion process based on the shift-invariant wavelet transform, i.e. first fusing the AC with the DPC image and then fusing the resulting image with the DFC image, and finally (iii) enhancing the fused image to obtain a final image using adaptive histogram equalization, adaptive sharpening and contrast optimization. Application examples are presented for two biological objects (a human tooth and a cherry) and the proposed method is compared to two recently published AC/DPC/DFC image processing techniques. In conclusion, the new framework for the processing of AC, DPC and DFC allows the most relevant features of all three images to be combined in one image while reducing the noise and enhancing adaptively the relevant image features. The newly developed framework may be used in technical and medical applications.

Light field image denoising using a linear 4D frequency-hyperfan all-in-focus filter

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dansereau, Donald G.; Bongiorno, Daniel L.; Pizarro, Oscar; Williams, Stefan B.

2013-02-01

Imaging in low light is problematic as sensor noise can dominate imagery, and increasing illumination or aperture size is not always effective or practical. Computational photography offers a promising solution in the form of the light field camera, which by capturing redundant information offers an opportunity for elegant noise rejection. We show that the light field of a Lambertian scene has a 4D hyperfan-shaped frequency-domain region of support at the intersection of a dual-fan and a hypercone. By designing and implementing a filter with appropriately shaped passband we accomplish denoising with a single all-in-focus linear filter. Drawing examples from the Stanford Light Field Archive and images captured using a commercially available lenselet- based plenoptic camera, we demonstrate that the hyperfan outperforms competing methods including synthetic focus, fan-shaped antialiasing filters, and a range of modern nonlinear image and video denoising techniques. We show the hyperfan preserves depth of field, making it a single-step all-in-focus denoising filter suitable for general-purpose light field rendering. We include results for different noise types and levels, over a variety of metrics, and in real-world scenarios. Finally, we show that the hyperfan's performance scales with aperture count.

Real-Time Noise Removal for Line-Scanning Hyperspectral Devices Using a Minimum Noise Fraction-Based Approach

PubMed Central

Bjorgan, Asgeir; Randeberg, Lise Lyngsnes

2015-01-01

Processing line-by-line and in real-time can be convenient for some applications of line-scanning hyperspectral imaging technology. Some types of processing, like inverse modeling and spectral analysis, can be sensitive to noise. The MNF (minimum noise fraction) transform provides suitable denoising performance, but requires full image availability for the estimation of image and noise statistics. In this work, a modified algorithm is proposed. Incrementally-updated statistics enables the algorithm to denoise the image line-by-line. The denoising performance has been compared to conventional MNF and found to be equal. With a satisfying denoising performance and real-time implementation, the developed algorithm can denoise line-scanned hyperspectral images in real-time. The elimination of waiting time before denoised data are available is an important step towards real-time visualization of processed hyperspectral data. The source code can be found at http://www.github.com/ntnu-bioopt/mnf. This includes an implementation of conventional MNF denoising. PMID:25654717

A fast non-local means algorithm based on integral image and reconstructed similar kernel

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lin, Zheng; Song, Enmin

2018-03-01

Image denoising is one of the essential methods in digital image processing. The non-local means (NLM) denoising approach is a remarkable denoising technique. However, its time complexity of the computation is high. In this paper, we design a fast NLM algorithm based on integral image and reconstructed similar kernel. First, the integral image is introduced in the traditional NLM algorithm. In doing so, it reduces a great deal of repetitive operations in the parallel processing, which will greatly improves the running speed of the algorithm. Secondly, in order to amend the error of the integral image, we construct a similar window resembling the Gaussian kernel in the pyramidal stacking pattern. Finally, in order to eliminate the influence produced by replacing the Gaussian weighted Euclidean distance with Euclidean distance, we propose a scheme to construct a similar kernel with a size of 3 x 3 in a neighborhood window which will reduce the effect of noise on a single pixel. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is about seventeen times faster than the traditional NLM algorithm, yet produce comparable results in terms of Peak Signal-to- Noise Ratio (the PSNR increased 2.9% in average) and perceptual image quality.

Efficient bias correction for magnetic resonance image denoising.

PubMed

Mukherjee, Partha Sarathi; Qiu, Peihua

2013-05-30

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a popular radiology technique that is used for visualizing detailed internal structure of the body. Observed MRI images are generated by the inverse Fourier transformation from received frequency signals of a magnetic resonance scanner system. Previous research has demonstrated that random noise involved in the observed MRI images can be described adequately by the so-called Rician noise model. Under that model, the observed image intensity at a given pixel is a nonlinear function of the true image intensity and of two independent zero-mean random variables with the same normal distribution. Because of such a complicated noise structure in the observed MRI images, denoised images by conventional denoising methods are usually biased, and the bias could reduce image contrast and negatively affect subsequent image analysis. Therefore, it is important to address the bias issue properly. To this end, several bias-correction procedures have been proposed in the literature. In this paper, we study the Rician noise model and the corresponding bias-correction problem systematically and propose a new and more effective bias-correction formula based on the regression analysis and Monte Carlo simulation. Numerical studies show that our proposed method works well in various applications. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Denoising of polychromatic CT images based on their own noise properties

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Kim, Ji Hye; Chang, Yongjin; Ra, Jong Beom, E-mail: jbra@kaist.ac.kr

Purpose: Because of high diagnostic accuracy and fast scan time, computed tomography (CT) has been widely used in various clinical applications. Since the CT scan introduces radiation exposure to patients, however, dose reduction has recently been recognized as an important issue in CT imaging. However, low-dose CT causes an increase of noise in the image and thereby deteriorates the accuracy of diagnosis. In this paper, the authors develop an efficient denoising algorithm for low-dose CT images obtained using a polychromatic x-ray source. The algorithm is based on two steps: (i) estimation of space variant noise statistics, which are uniquely determinedmore » according to the system geometry and scanned object, and (ii) subsequent novel conversion of the estimated noise to Gaussian noise so that an existing high performance Gaussian noise filtering algorithm can be directly applied to CT images with non-Gaussian noise. Methods: For efficient polychromatic CT image denoising, the authors first reconstruct an image with the iterative maximum-likelihood polychromatic algorithm for CT to alleviate the beam-hardening problem. We then estimate the space-variant noise variance distribution on the image domain. Since there are many high performance denoising algorithms available for the Gaussian noise, image denoising can become much more efficient if they can be used. Hence, the authors propose a novel conversion scheme to transform the estimated space-variant noise to near Gaussian noise. In the suggested scheme, the authors first convert the image so that its mean and variance can have a linear relationship, and then produce a Gaussian image via variance stabilizing transform. The authors then apply a block matching 4D algorithm that is optimized for noise reduction of the Gaussian image, and reconvert the result to obtain a final denoised image. To examine the performance of the proposed method, an XCAT phantom simulation and a physical phantom experiment were conducted. Results: Both simulation and experimental results show that, unlike the existing denoising algorithms, the proposed algorithm can effectively reduce the noise over the whole region of CT images while preventing degradation of image resolution. Conclusions: To effectively denoise polychromatic low-dose CT images, a novel denoising algorithm is proposed. Because this algorithm is based on the noise statistics of a reconstructed polychromatic CT image, the spatially varying noise on the image is effectively reduced so that the denoised image will have homogeneous quality over the image domain. Through a simulation and a real experiment, it is verified that the proposed algorithm can deliver considerably better performance compared to the existing denoising algorithms.« less

Speckle reduction in optical coherence tomography images based on wave atoms

PubMed Central

Du, Yongzhao; Liu, Gangjun; Feng, Guoying; Chen, Zhongping

2014-01-01

Abstract. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an emerging noninvasive imaging technique, which is based on low-coherence interferometry. OCT images suffer from speckle noise, which reduces image contrast. A shrinkage filter based on wave atoms transform is proposed for speckle reduction in OCT images. Wave atoms transform is a new multiscale geometric analysis tool that offers sparser expansion and better representation for images containing oscillatory patterns and textures than other traditional transforms, such as wavelet and curvelet transforms. Cycle spinning-based technology is introduced to avoid visual artifacts, such as Gibbs-like phenomenon, and to develop a translation invariant wave atoms denoising scheme. The speckle suppression degree in the denoised images is controlled by an adjustable parameter that determines the threshold in the wave atoms domain. The experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively remove the speckle noise and improve the OCT image quality. The signal-to-noise ratio, contrast-to-noise ratio, average equivalent number of looks, and cross-correlation (XCOR) values are obtained, and the results are also compared with the wavelet and curvelet thresholding techniques. PMID:24825507

Fractional domain varying-order differential denoising method

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Yan-Shan; Zhang, Feng; Li, Bing-Zhao; Tao, Ran

2014-10-01

Removal of noise is an important step in the image restoration process, and it remains a challenging problem in image processing. Denoising is a process used to remove the noise from the corrupted image, while retaining the edges and other detailed features as much as possible. Recently, denoising in the fractional domain is a hot research topic. The fractional-order anisotropic diffusion method can bring a less blocky effect and preserve edges in image denoising, a method that has received much interest in the literature. Based on this method, we propose a new method for image denoising, in which fractional-varying-order differential, rather than constant-order differential, is used. The theoretical analysis and experimental results show that compared with the state-of-the-art fractional-order anisotropic diffusion method, the proposed fractional-varying-order differential denoising model can preserve structure and texture well, while quickly removing noise, and yields good visual effects and better peak signal-to-noise ratio.

Green Channel Guiding Denoising on Bayer Image

PubMed Central

Zhang, Maojun

2014-01-01

Denoising is an indispensable function for digital cameras. In respect that noise is diffused during the demosaicking, the denoising ought to work directly on bayer data. The difficulty of denoising on bayer image is the interlaced mosaic pattern of red, green, and blue. Guided filter is a novel time efficient explicit filter kernel which can incorporate additional information from the guidance image, but it is still not applied for bayer image. In this work, we observe that the green channel of bayer mode is higher in both sampling rate and Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) than the red and blue ones. Therefore the green channel can be used to guide denoising. This kind of guidance integrates the different color channels together. Experiments on both actual and simulated bayer images indicate that green channel acts well as the guidance signal, and the proposed method is competitive with other popular filter kernel denoising methods. PMID:24741370

Denoising Algorithm for CFA Image Sensors Considering Inter-Channel Correlation.

PubMed

Lee, Min Seok; Park, Sang Wook; Kang, Moon Gi

2017-05-28

In this paper, a spatio-spectral-temporal filter considering an inter-channel correlation is proposed for the denoising of a color filter array (CFA) sequence acquired by CCD/CMOS image sensors. Owing to the alternating under-sampled grid of the CFA pattern, the inter-channel correlation must be considered in the direct denoising process. The proposed filter is applied in the spatial, spectral, and temporal domain, considering the spatio-tempo-spectral correlation. First, nonlocal means (NLM) spatial filtering with patch-based difference (PBD) refinement is performed by considering both the intra-channel correlation and inter-channel correlation to overcome the spatial resolution degradation occurring with the alternating under-sampled pattern. Second, a motion-compensated temporal filter that employs inter-channel correlated motion estimation and compensation is proposed to remove the noise in the temporal domain. Then, a motion adaptive detection value controls the ratio of the spatial filter and the temporal filter. The denoised CFA sequence can thus be obtained without motion artifacts. Experimental results for both simulated and real CFA sequences are presented with visual and numerical comparisons to several state-of-the-art denoising methods combined with a demosaicing method. Experimental results confirmed that the proposed frameworks outperformed the other techniques in terms of the objective criteria and subjective visual perception in CFA sequences.

A photon recycling approach to the denoising of ultra-low dose X-ray sequences.

PubMed

Hariharan, Sai Gokul; Strobel, Norbert; Kaethner, Christian; Kowarschik, Markus; Demirci, Stefanie; Albarqouni, Shadi; Fahrig, Rebecca; Navab, Nassir

2018-06-01

Clinical procedures that make use of fluoroscopy may expose patients as well as the clinical staff (throughout their career) to non-negligible doses of radiation. The potential consequences of such exposures fall under two categories, namely stochastic (mostly cancer) and deterministic risks (skin injury). According to the "as low as reasonably achievable" principle, the radiation dose can be lowered only if the necessary image quality can be maintained. Our work improves upon the existing patch-based denoising algorithms by utilizing a more sophisticated noise model to exploit non-local self-similarity better and this in turn improves the performance of low-rank approximation. The novelty of the proposed approach lies in its properly designed and parameterized noise model and the elimination of initial estimates. This reduces the computational cost significantly. The algorithm has been evaluated on 500 clinical images (7 patients, 20 sequences, 3 clinical sites), taken at ultra-low dose levels, i.e. 50% of the standard low dose level, during electrophysiology procedures. An average improvement in the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) by a factor of around 3.5 has been found. This is associated with an image quality achieved at around 12 (square of 3.5) times the ultra-low dose level. Qualitative evaluation by X-ray image quality experts suggests that the method produces denoised images that comply with the required image quality criteria. The results are consistent with the number of patches used, and they demonstrate that it is possible to use motion estimation techniques and "recycle" photons from previous frames to improve the image quality of the current frame. Our results are comparable in terms of CNR to Video Block Matching 3D-a state-of-the-art denoising method. But qualitative analysis by experts confirms that the denoised ultra-low dose X-ray images obtained using our method are more realistic with respect to appearance.

Automatic brain MR image denoising based on texture feature-based artificial neural networks.

PubMed

Chang, Yu-Ning; Chang, Herng-Hua

2015-01-01

Noise is one of the main sources of quality deterioration not only for visual inspection but also in computerized processing in brain magnetic resonance (MR) image analysis such as tissue classification, segmentation and registration. Accordingly, noise removal in brain MR images is important for a wide variety of subsequent processing applications. However, most existing denoising algorithms require laborious tuning of parameters that are often sensitive to specific image features and textures. Automation of these parameters through artificial intelligence techniques will be highly beneficial. In the present study, an artificial neural network associated with image texture feature analysis is proposed to establish a predictable parameter model and automate the denoising procedure. In the proposed approach, a total of 83 image attributes were extracted based on four categories: 1) Basic image statistics. 2) Gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM). 3) Gray-level run-length matrix (GLRLM) and 4) Tamura texture features. To obtain the ranking of discrimination in these texture features, a paired-samples t-test was applied to each individual image feature computed in every image. Subsequently, the sequential forward selection (SFS) method was used to select the best texture features according to the ranking of discrimination. The selected optimal features were further incorporated into a back propagation neural network to establish a predictable parameter model. A wide variety of MR images with various scenarios were adopted to evaluate the performance of the proposed framework. Experimental results indicated that this new automation system accurately predicted the bilateral filtering parameters and effectively removed the noise in a number of MR images. Comparing to the manually tuned filtering process, our approach not only produced better denoised results but also saved significant processing time.

Parallel object-oriented, denoising system using wavelet multiresolution analysis

DOEpatents

Kamath, Chandrika; Baldwin, Chuck H.; Fodor, Imola K.; Tang, Nu A.

2005-04-12

The present invention provides a data de-noising system utilizing processors and wavelet denoising techniques. Data is read and displayed in different formats. The data is partitioned into regions and the regions are distributed onto the processors. Communication requirements are determined among the processors according to the wavelet denoising technique and the partitioning of the data. The data is transforming onto different multiresolution levels with the wavelet transform according to the wavelet denoising technique, the communication requirements, and the transformed data containing wavelet coefficients. The denoised data is then transformed into its original reading and displaying data format.

MR image denoising method for brain surface 3D modeling

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhao, De-xin; Liu, Peng-jie; Zhang, De-gan

2014-11-01

Three-dimensional (3D) modeling of medical images is a critical part of surgical simulation. In this paper, we focus on the magnetic resonance (MR) images denoising for brain modeling reconstruction, and exploit a practical solution. We attempt to remove the noise existing in the MR imaging signal and preserve the image characteristics. A wavelet-based adaptive curve shrinkage function is presented in spherical coordinates system. The comparative experiments show that the denoising method can preserve better image details and enhance the coefficients of contours. Using these denoised images, the brain 3D visualization is given through surface triangle mesh model, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Exploiting sparsity and low-rank structure for the recovery of multi-slice breast MRIs with reduced sampling error.

PubMed

Yin, X X; Ng, B W-H; Ramamohanarao, K; Baghai-Wadji, A; Abbott, D

2012-09-01

It has been shown that, magnetic resonance images (MRIs) with sparsity representation in a transformed domain, e.g. spatial finite-differences (FD), or discrete cosine transform (DCT), can be restored from undersampled k-space via applying current compressive sampling theory. The paper presents a model-based method for the restoration of MRIs. The reduced-order model, in which a full-system-response is projected onto a subspace of lower dimensionality, has been used to accelerate image reconstruction by reducing the size of the involved linear system. In this paper, the singular value threshold (SVT) technique is applied as a denoising scheme to reduce and select the model order of the inverse Fourier transform image, and to restore multi-slice breast MRIs that have been compressively sampled in k-space. The restored MRIs with SVT for denoising show reduced sampling errors compared to the direct MRI restoration methods via spatial FD, or DCT. Compressive sampling is a technique for finding sparse solutions to underdetermined linear systems. The sparsity that is implicit in MRIs is to explore the solution to MRI reconstruction after transformation from significantly undersampled k-space. The challenge, however, is that, since some incoherent artifacts result from the random undersampling, noise-like interference is added to the image with sparse representation. These recovery algorithms in the literature are not capable of fully removing the artifacts. It is necessary to introduce a denoising procedure to improve the quality of image recovery. This paper applies a singular value threshold algorithm to reduce the model order of image basis functions, which allows further improvement of the quality of image reconstruction with removal of noise artifacts. The principle of the denoising scheme is to reconstruct the sparse MRI matrices optimally with a lower rank via selecting smaller number of dominant singular values. The singular value threshold algorithm is performed by minimizing the nuclear norm of difference between the sampled image and the recovered image. It has been illustrated that this algorithm improves the ability of previous image reconstruction algorithms to remove noise artifacts while significantly improving the quality of MRI recovery.

Remote sensing image denoising application by generalized morphological component analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yu, Chong; Chen, Xiong

2014-12-01

In this paper, we introduced a remote sensing image denoising method based on generalized morphological component analysis (GMCA). This novel algorithm is the further extension of morphological component analysis (MCA) algorithm to the blind source separation framework. The iterative thresholding strategy adopted by GMCA algorithm firstly works on the most significant features in the image, and then progressively incorporates smaller features to finely tune the parameters of whole model. Mathematical analysis of the computational complexity of GMCA algorithm is provided. Several comparison experiments with state-of-the-art denoising algorithms are reported. In order to make quantitative assessment of algorithms in experiments, Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) index and Structural Similarity (SSIM) index are calculated to assess the denoising effect from the gray-level fidelity aspect and the structure-level fidelity aspect, respectively. Quantitative analysis on experiment results, which is consistent with the visual effect illustrated by denoised images, has proven that the introduced GMCA algorithm possesses a marvelous remote sensing image denoising effectiveness and ability. It is even hard to distinguish the original noiseless image from the recovered image by adopting GMCA algorithm through visual effect.

Denoising Medical Images using Calculus of Variations

PubMed Central

Kohan, Mahdi Nakhaie; Behnam, Hamid

2011-01-01

We propose a method for medical image denoising using calculus of variations and local variance estimation by shaped windows. This method reduces any additive noise and preserves small patterns and edges of images. A pyramid structure-texture decomposition of images is used to separate noise and texture components based on local variance measures. The experimental results show that the proposed method has visual improvement as well as a better SNR, RMSE and PSNR than common medical image denoising methods. Experimental results in denoising a sample Magnetic Resonance image show that SNR, PSNR and RMSE have been improved by 19, 9 and 21 percents respectively. PMID:22606674

PCA-based spatially adaptive denoising of CFA images for single-sensor digital cameras.

PubMed

Zheng, Lei; Lukac, Rastislav; Wu, Xiaolin; Zhang, David

2009-04-01

Single-sensor digital color cameras use a process called color demosiacking to produce full color images from the data captured by a color filter array (CAF). The quality of demosiacked images is degraded due to the sensor noise introduced during the image acquisition process. The conventional solution to combating CFA sensor noise is demosiacking first, followed by a separate denoising processing. This strategy will generate many noise-caused color artifacts in the demosiacking process, which are hard to remove in the denoising process. Few denoising schemes that work directly on the CFA images have been presented because of the difficulties arisen from the red, green and blue interlaced mosaic pattern, yet a well-designed "denoising first and demosiacking later" scheme can have advantages such as less noise-caused color artifacts and cost-effective implementation. This paper presents a principle component analysis (PCA)-based spatially-adaptive denoising algorithm, which works directly on the CFA data using a supporting window to analyze the local image statistics. By exploiting the spatial and spectral correlations existing in the CFA image, the proposed method can effectively suppress noise while preserving color edges and details. Experiments using both simulated and real CFA images indicate that the proposed scheme outperforms many existing approaches, including those sophisticated demosiacking and denoising schemes, in terms of both objective measurement and visual evaluation.

On Adapting the Tensor Voting Framework to Robust Color Image Denoising

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Moreno, Rodrigo; Garcia, Miguel Angel; Puig, Domenec; Julià, Carme

This paper presents an adaptation of the tensor voting framework for color image denoising, while preserving edges. Tensors are used in order to encode the CIELAB color channels, the uniformity and the edginess of image pixels. A specific voting process is proposed in order to propagate color from a pixel to its neighbors by considering the distance between pixels, the perceptual color difference (by using an optimized version of CIEDE2000), a uniformity measurement and the likelihood of the pixels being impulse noise. The original colors are corrected with those encoded by the tensors obtained after the voting process. Peak to noise ratios and visual inspection show that the proposed methodology has a better performance than state-of-the-art techniques.

Optical coherence tomography retinal image reconstruction via nonlocal weighted sparse representation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Abbasi, Ashkan; Monadjemi, Amirhassan; Fang, Leyuan; Rabbani, Hossein

2018-03-01

We present a nonlocal weighted sparse representation (NWSR) method for reconstruction of retinal optical coherence tomography (OCT) images. To reconstruct a high signal-to-noise ratio and high-resolution OCT images, utilization of efficient denoising and interpolation algorithms are necessary, especially when the original data were subsampled during acquisition. However, the OCT images suffer from the presence of a high level of noise, which makes the estimation of sparse representations a difficult task. Thus, the proposed NWSR method merges sparse representations of multiple similar noisy and denoised patches to better estimate a sparse representation for each patch. First, the sparse representation of each patch is independently computed over an overcomplete dictionary, and then a nonlocal weighted sparse coefficient is computed by averaging representations of similar patches. Since the sparsity can reveal relevant information from noisy patches, combining noisy and denoised patches' representations is beneficial to obtain a more robust estimate of the unknown sparse representation. The denoised patches are obtained by applying an off-the-shelf image denoising method and our method provides an efficient way to exploit information from noisy and denoised patches' representations. The experimental results on denoising and interpolation of spectral domain OCT images demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed NWSR method over existing state-of-the-art methods.

A denoising algorithm for CT image using low-rank sparse coding

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lei, Yang; Xu, Dong; Zhou, Zhengyang; Wang, Tonghe; Dong, Xue; Liu, Tian; Dhabaan, Anees; Curran, Walter J.; Yang, Xiaofeng

2018-03-01

We propose a denoising method of CT image based on low-rank sparse coding. The proposed method constructs an adaptive dictionary of image patches and estimates the sparse coding regularization parameters using the Bayesian interpretation. A low-rank approximation approach is used to simultaneously construct the dictionary and achieve sparse representation through clustering similar image patches. A variable-splitting scheme and a quadratic optimization are used to reconstruct CT image based on achieved sparse coefficients. We tested this denoising technology using phantom, brain and abdominal CT images. The experimental results showed that the proposed method delivers state-of-art denoising performance, both in terms of objective criteria and visual quality.

Image denoising based on noise detection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jiang, Yuanxiang; Yuan, Rui; Sun, Yuqiu; Tian, Jinwen

2018-03-01

Because of the noise points in the images, any operation of denoising would change the original information of non-noise pixel. A noise detection algorithm based on fractional calculus was proposed to denoise in this paper. Convolution of the image was made to gain direction gradient masks firstly. Then, the mean gray was calculated to obtain the gradient detection maps. Logical product was made to acquire noise position image next. Comparisons in the visual effect and evaluation parameters after processing, the results of experiment showed that the denoising algorithms based on noise were better than that of traditional methods in both subjective and objective aspects.

Medical image denoising via optimal implementation of non-local means on hybrid parallel architecture.

PubMed

Nguyen, Tuan-Anh; Nakib, Amir; Nguyen, Huy-Nam

2016-06-01

The Non-local means denoising filter has been established as gold standard for image denoising problem in general and particularly in medical imaging due to its efficiency. However, its computation time limited its applications in real world application, especially in medical imaging. In this paper, a distributed version on parallel hybrid architecture is proposed to solve the computation time problem and a new method to compute the filters' coefficients is also proposed, where we focused on the implementation and the enhancement of filters' parameters via taking the neighborhood of the current voxel more accurately into account. In terms of implementation, our key contribution consists in reducing the number of shared memory accesses. The different tests of the proposed method were performed on the brain-web database for different levels of noise. Performances and the sensitivity were quantified in terms of speedup, peak signal to noise ratio, execution time, the number of floating point operations. The obtained results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed method. Moreover, the implementation is compared to that of other techniques, recently published in the literature. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Denoising imaging polarimetry by adapted BM3D method.

PubMed

Tibbs, Alexander B; Daly, Ilse M; Roberts, Nicholas W; Bull, David R

2018-04-01

In addition to the visual information contained in intensity and color, imaging polarimetry allows visual information to be extracted from the polarization of light. However, a major challenge of imaging polarimetry is image degradation due to noise. This paper investigates the mitigation of noise through denoising algorithms and compares existing denoising algorithms with a new method, based on BM3D (Block Matching 3D). This algorithm, Polarization-BM3D (PBM3D), gives visual quality superior to the state of the art across all images and noise standard deviations tested. We show that denoising polarization images using PBM3D allows the degree of polarization to be more accurately calculated by comparing it with spectral polarimetry measurements.

Denoising time-resolved microscopy image sequences with singular value thresholding.

PubMed

Furnival, Tom; Leary, Rowan K; Midgley, Paul A

2017-07-01

Time-resolved imaging in microscopy is important for the direct observation of a range of dynamic processes in both the physical and life sciences. However, the image sequences are often corrupted by noise, either as a result of high frame rates or a need to limit the radiation dose received by the sample. Here we exploit both spatial and temporal correlations using low-rank matrix recovery methods to denoise microscopy image sequences. We also make use of an unbiased risk estimator to address the issue of how much thresholding to apply in a robust and automated manner. The performance of the technique is demonstrated using simulated image sequences, as well as experimental scanning transmission electron microscopy data, where surface adatom motion and nanoparticle structural dynamics are recovered at rates of up to 32 frames per second. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The EM Method in a Probabilistic Wavelet-Based MRI Denoising

PubMed Central

2015-01-01

Human body heat emission and others external causes can interfere in magnetic resonance image acquisition and produce noise. In this kind of images, the noise, when no signal is present, is Rayleigh distributed and its wavelet coefficients can be approximately modeled by a Gaussian distribution. Noiseless magnetic resonance images can be modeled by a Laplacian distribution in the wavelet domain. This paper proposes a new magnetic resonance image denoising method to solve this fact. This method performs shrinkage of wavelet coefficients based on the conditioned probability of being noise or detail. The parameters involved in this filtering approach are calculated by means of the expectation maximization (EM) method, which avoids the need to use an estimator of noise variance. The efficiency of the proposed filter is studied and compared with other important filtering techniques, such as Nowak's, Donoho-Johnstone's, Awate-Whitaker's, and nonlocal means filters, in different 2D and 3D images. PMID:26089959

The EM Method in a Probabilistic Wavelet-Based MRI Denoising.

PubMed

Martin-Fernandez, Marcos; Villullas, Sergio

2015-01-01

Human body heat emission and others external causes can interfere in magnetic resonance image acquisition and produce noise. In this kind of images, the noise, when no signal is present, is Rayleigh distributed and its wavelet coefficients can be approximately modeled by a Gaussian distribution. Noiseless magnetic resonance images can be modeled by a Laplacian distribution in the wavelet domain. This paper proposes a new magnetic resonance image denoising method to solve this fact. This method performs shrinkage of wavelet coefficients based on the conditioned probability of being noise or detail. The parameters involved in this filtering approach are calculated by means of the expectation maximization (EM) method, which avoids the need to use an estimator of noise variance. The efficiency of the proposed filter is studied and compared with other important filtering techniques, such as Nowak's, Donoho-Johnstone's, Awate-Whitaker's, and nonlocal means filters, in different 2D and 3D images.

Denoising time-domain induced polarisation data using wavelet techniques

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Deo, Ravin N.; Cull, James P.

2016-05-01

Time-domain induced polarisation (TDIP) methods are routinely used for near-surface evaluations in quasi-urban environments harbouring networks of buried civil infrastructure. A conventional technique for improving signal to noise ratio in such environments is by using analogue or digital low-pass filtering followed by stacking and rectification. However, this induces large distortions in the processed data. In this study, we have conducted the first application of wavelet based denoising techniques for processing raw TDIP data. Our investigation included laboratory and field measurements to better understand the advantages and limitations of this technique. It was found that distortions arising from conventional filtering can be significantly avoided with the use of wavelet based denoising techniques. With recent advances in full-waveform acquisition and analysis, incorporation of wavelet denoising techniques can further enhance surveying capabilities. In this work, we present the rationale for utilising wavelet denoising methods and discuss some important implications, which can positively influence TDIP methods.

Graph Laplacian Regularization for Image Denoising: Analysis in the Continuous Domain.

PubMed

Pang, Jiahao; Cheung, Gene

2017-04-01

Inverse imaging problems are inherently underdetermined, and hence, it is important to employ appropriate image priors for regularization. One recent popular prior-the graph Laplacian regularizer-assumes that the target pixel patch is smooth with respect to an appropriately chosen graph. However, the mechanisms and implications of imposing the graph Laplacian regularizer on the original inverse problem are not well understood. To address this problem, in this paper, we interpret neighborhood graphs of pixel patches as discrete counterparts of Riemannian manifolds and perform analysis in the continuous domain, providing insights into several fundamental aspects of graph Laplacian regularization for image denoising. Specifically, we first show the convergence of the graph Laplacian regularizer to a continuous-domain functional, integrating a norm measured in a locally adaptive metric space. Focusing on image denoising, we derive an optimal metric space assuming non-local self-similarity of pixel patches, leading to an optimal graph Laplacian regularizer for denoising in the discrete domain. We then interpret graph Laplacian regularization as an anisotropic diffusion scheme to explain its behavior during iterations, e.g., its tendency to promote piecewise smooth signals under certain settings. To verify our analysis, an iterative image denoising algorithm is developed. Experimental results show that our algorithm performs competitively with state-of-the-art denoising methods, such as BM3D for natural images, and outperforms them significantly for piecewise smooth images.

Geodesic denoising for optical coherence tomography images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shahrian Varnousfaderani, Ehsan; Vogl, Wolf-Dieter; Wu, Jing; Gerendas, Bianca S.; Simader, Christian; Langs, Georg; Waldstein, Sebastian M.; Schmidt-Erfurth, Ursula

2016-03-01

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is an optical signal acquisition method capturing micrometer resolution, cross-sectional three-dimensional images. OCT images are used widely in ophthalmology to diagnose and monitor retinal diseases such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and Glaucoma. While OCT allows the visualization of retinal structures such as vessels and retinal layers, image quality and contrast is reduced by speckle noise, obfuscating small, low intensity structures and structural boundaries. Existing denoising methods for OCT images may remove clinically significant image features such as texture and boundaries of anomalies. In this paper, we propose a novel patch based denoising method, Geodesic Denoising. The method reduces noise in OCT images while preserving clinically significant, although small, pathological structures, such as fluid-filled cysts in diseased retinas. Our method selects optimal image patch distribution representations based on geodesic patch similarity to noisy samples. Patch distributions are then randomly sampled to build a set of best matching candidates for every noisy sample, and the denoised value is computed based on a geodesic weighted average of the best candidate samples. Our method is evaluated qualitatively on real pathological OCT scans and quantitatively on a proposed set of ground truth, noise free synthetic OCT scans with artificially added noise and pathologies. Experimental results show that performance of our method is comparable with state of the art denoising methods while outperforming them in preserving the critical clinically relevant structures.

Hyperspectral image denoising and anomaly detection based on low-rank and sparse representations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhuang, Lina; Gao, Lianru; Zhang, Bing; Bioucas-Dias, José M.

2017-10-01

The very high spectral resolution of Hyperspectral Images (HSIs) enables the identification of materials with subtle differences and the extraction subpixel information. However, the increasing of spectral resolution often implies an increasing in the noise linked with the image formation process. This degradation mechanism limits the quality of extracted information and its potential applications. Since HSIs represent natural scenes and their spectral channels are highly correlated, they are characterized by a high level of self-similarity and are well approximated by low-rank representations. These characteristic underlies the state-of-the-art in HSI denoising. However, in presence of rare pixels, the denoising performance of those methods is not optimal and, in addition, it may compromise the future detection of those pixels. To address these hurdles, we introduce RhyDe (Robust hyperspectral Denoising), a powerful HSI denoiser, which implements explicit low-rank representation, promotes self-similarity, and, by using a form of collaborative sparsity, preserves rare pixels. The denoising and detection effectiveness of the proposed robust HSI denoiser is illustrated using semi-real data.

Improved JPEG anti-forensics with better image visual quality and forensic undetectability.

PubMed

Singh, Gurinder; Singh, Kulbir

2017-08-01

There is an immediate need to validate the authenticity of digital images due to the availability of powerful image processing tools that can easily manipulate the digital image information without leaving any traces. The digital image forensics most often employs the tampering detectors based on JPEG compression. Therefore, to evaluate the competency of the JPEG forensic detectors, an anti-forensic technique is required. In this paper, two improved JPEG anti-forensic techniques are proposed to remove the blocking artifacts left by the JPEG compression in both spatial and DCT domain. In the proposed framework, the grainy noise left by the perceptual histogram smoothing in DCT domain can be reduced significantly by applying the proposed de-noising operation. Two types of denoising algorithms are proposed, one is based on the constrained minimization problem of total variation of energy and other on the normalized weighted function. Subsequently, an improved TV based deblocking operation is proposed to eliminate the blocking artifacts in the spatial domain. Then, a decalibration operation is applied to bring the processed image statistics back to its standard position. The experimental results show that the proposed anti-forensic approaches outperform the existing state-of-the-art techniques in achieving enhanced tradeoff between image visual quality and forensic undetectability, but with high computational cost. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Nonlocal Means Denoising of Self-Gated and k-Space Sorted 4-Dimensional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Using Block-Matching and 3-Dimensional Filtering: Implications for Pancreatic Tumor Registration and Segmentation

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Jin, Jun; McKenzie, Elizabeth; Fan, Zhaoyang

Purpose: To denoise self-gated k-space sorted 4-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging (SG-KS-4D-MRI) by applying a nonlocal means denoising filter, block-matching and 3-dimensional filtering (BM3D), to test its impact on the accuracy of 4D image deformable registration and automated tumor segmentation for pancreatic cancer patients. Methods and Materials: Nine patients with pancreatic cancer and abdominal SG-KS-4D-MRI were included in the study. Block-matching and 3D filtering was adapted to search in the axial slices/frames adjacent to the reference image patch in the spatial and temporal domains. The patches with high similarity to the reference patch were used to collectively denoise the 4D-MRI image. Themore » pancreas tumor was manually contoured on the first end-of-exhalation phase for both the raw and the denoised 4D-MRI. B-spline deformable registration was applied to the subsequent phases for contour propagation. The consistency of tumor volume defined by the standard deviation of gross tumor volumes from 10 breathing phases (σ-GTV), tumor motion trajectories in 3 cardinal motion planes, 4D-MRI imaging noise, and image contrast-to-noise ratio were compared between the raw and denoised groups. Results: Block-matching and 3D filtering visually and quantitatively reduced image noise by 52% and improved image contrast-to-noise ratio by 56%, without compromising soft tissue edge definitions. Automatic tumor segmentation is statistically more consistent on the denoised 4D-MRI (σ-GTV = 0.6 cm{sup 3}) than on the raw 4D-MRI (σ-GTV = 0.8 cm{sup 3}). Tumor end-of-exhalation location is also more reproducible on the denoised 4D-MRI than on the raw 4D-MRI in all 3 cardinal motion planes. Conclusions: Block-matching and 3D filtering can significantly reduce random image noise while maintaining structural features in the SG-KS-4D-MRI datasets. In this study of pancreatic tumor segmentation, automatic segmentation of GTV in the registered image sets is shown to be more consistent on the denoised 4D-MRI than on the raw 4D-MRI.« less

Adaptively Tuned Iterative Low Dose CT Image Denoising

PubMed Central

Hashemi, SayedMasoud; Paul, Narinder S.; Beheshti, Soosan; Cobbold, Richard S. C.

2015-01-01

Improving image quality is a critical objective in low dose computed tomography (CT) imaging and is the primary focus of CT image denoising. State-of-the-art CT denoising algorithms are mainly based on iterative minimization of an objective function, in which the performance is controlled by regularization parameters. To achieve the best results, these should be chosen carefully. However, the parameter selection is typically performed in an ad hoc manner, which can cause the algorithms to converge slowly or become trapped in a local minimum. To overcome these issues a noise confidence region evaluation (NCRE) method is used, which evaluates the denoising residuals iteratively and compares their statistics with those produced by additive noise. It then updates the parameters at the end of each iteration to achieve a better match to the noise statistics. By combining NCRE with the fundamentals of block matching and 3D filtering (BM3D) approach, a new iterative CT image denoising method is proposed. It is shown that this new denoising method improves the BM3D performance in terms of both the mean square error and a structural similarity index. Moreover, simulations and patient results show that this method preserves the clinically important details of low dose CT images together with a substantial noise reduction. PMID:26089972

Nonlinear spatio-temporal filtering of dynamic PET data using a four-dimensional Gaussian filter and expectation-maximization deconvolution

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Floberg, J. M.; Holden, J. E.

2013-02-01

We introduce a method for denoising dynamic PET data, spatio-temporal expectation-maximization (STEM) filtering, that combines four-dimensional Gaussian filtering with EM deconvolution. The initial Gaussian filter suppresses noise at a broad range of spatial and temporal frequencies and EM deconvolution quickly restores the frequencies most important to the signal. We aim to demonstrate that STEM filtering can improve variance in both individual time frames and in parametric images without introducing significant bias. We evaluate STEM filtering with a dynamic phantom study, and with simulated and human dynamic PET studies of a tracer with reversible binding behaviour, [C-11]raclopride, and a tracer with irreversible binding behaviour, [F-18]FDOPA. STEM filtering is compared to a number of established three and four-dimensional denoising methods. STEM filtering provides substantial improvements in variance in both individual time frames and in parametric images generated with a number of kinetic analysis techniques while introducing little bias. STEM filtering does bias early frames, but this does not affect quantitative parameter estimates. STEM filtering is shown to be superior to the other simple denoising methods studied. STEM filtering is a simple and effective denoising method that could be valuable for a wide range of dynamic PET applications.

Reduction of speckle noise from optical coherence tomography images using multi-frame weighted nuclear norm minimization method

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Thapa, Damber; Raahemifar, Kaamran; Lakshminarayanan, Vasudevan

2015-12-01

In this paper, we propose a speckle noise reduction method for spectral-domain optical coherence tomography (SD-OCT) images called multi-frame weighted nuclear norm minimization (MWNNM). This method is a direct extension of weighted nuclear norm minimization (WNNM) in the multi-frame framework since an adequately denoised image could not be achieved with single-frame denoising methods. The MWNNM method exploits multiple B-scans collected from a small area of a SD-OCT volumetric image, and then denoises and averages them together to obtain a high signal-to-noise ratio B-scan. The results show that the image quality metrics obtained by denoising and averaging only five nearby B-scans with MWNNM method is considerably better than those of the average image obtained by registering and averaging 40 azimuthally repeated B-scans.

Comparison of pre-processing techniques for fluorescence microscopy images of cells labeled for actin.

PubMed

Muralidhar, Gautam S; Channappayya, Sumohana S; Slater, John H; Blinka, Ellen M; Bovik, Alan C; Frey, Wolfgang; Markey, Mia K

2008-11-06

Automated analysis of fluorescence microscopy images of endothelial cells labeled for actin is important for quantifying changes in the actin cytoskeleton. The current manual approach is laborious and inefficient. The goal of our work is to develop automated image analysis methods, thereby increasing cell analysis throughput. In this study, we present preliminary results on comparing different algorithms for cell segmentation and image denoising.

Methodological improvements in voxel-based analysis of diffusion tensor images: applications to study the impact of apolipoprotein E on white matter integrity.

PubMed

Newlander, Shawn M; Chu, Alan; Sinha, Usha S; Lu, Po H; Bartzokis, George

2014-02-01

To identify regional differences in apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and fractional anisotropy (FA) using customized preprocessing before voxel-based analysis (VBA) in 14 normal subjects with the specific genes that decrease (apolipoprotein [APO] E ε2) and that increase (APOE ε4) the risk of Alzheimer's disease. Diffusion tensor images (DTI) acquired at 1.5 Tesla were denoised with a total variation tensor regularization algorithm before affine and nonlinear registration to generate a common reference frame for the image volumes of all subjects. Anisotropic and isotropic smoothing with varying kernel sizes was applied to the aligned data before VBA to determine regional differences between cohorts segregated by allele status. VBA on the denoised tensor data identified regions of reduced FA in APOE ε4 compared with the APOE ε2 healthy older carriers. The most consistent results were obtained using the denoised tensor and anisotropic smoothing before statistical testing. In contrast, isotropic smoothing identified regional differences for small filter sizes alone, emphasizing that this method introduces bias in FA values for higher kernel sizes. Voxel-based DTI analysis can be performed on low signal to noise ratio images to detect subtle regional differences in cohorts using the proposed preprocessing techniques. Copyright © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

An anisotropic diffusion method for denoising dynamic susceptibility contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Murase, Kenya; Yamazaki, Youichi; Shinohara, Masaaki; Kawakami, Kazunori; Kikuchi, Keiichi; Miki, Hitoshi; Mochizuki, Teruhito; Ikezoe, Junpei

2001-10-01

The purpose of this study was to present an application of a novel denoising technique for improving the accuracy of cerebral blood flow (CBF) images generated from dynamic susceptibility contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DSC-MRI). The method presented in this study was based on anisotropic diffusion (AD). The usefulness of this method was firstly investigated using computer simulations. We applied this method to patient data acquired using a 1.5 T MR system. After a bolus injection of Gd-DTPA, we obtained 40-50 dynamic images with a 1.32-2.08 s time resolution in 4-6 slices. The dynamic images were processed using the AD method, and then the CBF images were generated using pixel-by-pixel deconvolution analysis. For comparison, the CBF images were also generated with or without processing the dynamic images using a median or Gaussian filter. In simulation studies, the standard deviation of the CBF values obtained after processing by the AD method was smaller than that of the CBF values obtained without any processing, while the mean value agreed well with the true CBF value. Although the median and Gaussian filters also reduced image noise, the mean CBF values were considerably underestimated compared with the true values. Clinical studies also suggested that the AD method was capable of reducing the image noise while preserving the quantitative accuracy of CBF images. In conclusion, the AD method appears useful for denoising DSC-MRI, which will make the CBF images generated from DSC-MRI more reliable.

Directional bilateral filters for smoothing fluorescence microscopy images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Venkatesh, Manasij; Mohan, Kavya; Seelamantula, Chandra Sekhar

2015-08-01

Images obtained through fluorescence microscopy at low numerical aperture (NA) are noisy and have poor resolution. Images of specimens such as F-actin filaments obtained using confocal or widefield fluorescence microscopes contain directional information and it is important that an image smoothing or filtering technique preserve the directionality. F-actin filaments are widely studied in pathology because the abnormalities in actin dynamics play a key role in diagnosis of cancer, cardiac diseases, vascular diseases, myofibrillar myopathies, neurological disorders, etc. We develop the directional bilateral filter as a means of filtering out the noise in the image without significantly altering the directionality of the F-actin filaments. The bilateral filter is anisotropic to start with, but we add an additional degree of anisotropy by employing an oriented domain kernel for smoothing. The orientation is locally adapted using a structure tensor and the parameters of the bilateral filter are optimized for within the framework of statistical risk minimization. We show that the directional bilateral filter has better denoising performance than the traditional Gaussian bilateral filter and other denoising techniques such as SURE-LET, non-local means, and guided image filtering at various noise levels in terms of peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR). We also show quantitative improvements in low NA images of F-actin filaments.

Adaptive regularization of the NL-means: application to image and video denoising.

PubMed

Sutour, Camille; Deledalle, Charles-Alban; Aujol, Jean-François

2014-08-01

Image denoising is a central problem in image processing and it is often a necessary step prior to higher level analysis such as segmentation, reconstruction, or super-resolution. The nonlocal means (NL-means) perform denoising by exploiting the natural redundancy of patterns inside an image; they perform a weighted average of pixels whose neighborhoods (patches) are close to each other. This reduces significantly the noise while preserving most of the image content. While it performs well on flat areas and textures, it suffers from two opposite drawbacks: it might over-smooth low-contrasted areas or leave a residual noise around edges and singular structures. Denoising can also be performed by total variation minimization-the Rudin, Osher and Fatemi model-which leads to restore regular images, but it is prone to over-smooth textures, staircasing effects, and contrast losses. We introduce in this paper a variational approach that corrects the over-smoothing and reduces the residual noise of the NL-means by adaptively regularizing nonlocal methods with the total variation. The proposed regularized NL-means algorithm combines these methods and reduces both of their respective defaults by minimizing an adaptive total variation with a nonlocal data fidelity term. Besides, this model adapts to different noise statistics and a fast solution can be obtained in the general case of the exponential family. We develop this model for image denoising and we adapt it to video denoising with 3D patches.

Analysis of Non Local Image Denoising Methods

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pardo, Álvaro

Image denoising is probably one of the most studied problems in the image processing community. Recently a new paradigm on non local denoising was introduced. The Non Local Means method proposed by Buades, Morel and Coll attracted the attention of other researches who proposed improvements and modifications to their proposal. In this work we analyze those methods trying to understand their properties while connecting them to segmentation based on spectral graph properties. We also propose some improvements to automatically estimate the parameters used on these methods.

Efficient OCT Image Enhancement Based on Collaborative Shock Filtering

PubMed Central

2018-01-01

Efficient enhancement of noisy optical coherence tomography (OCT) images is a key task for interpreting them correctly. In this paper, to better enhance details and layered structures of a human retina image, we propose a collaborative shock filtering for OCT image denoising and enhancement. Noisy OCT image is first denoised by a collaborative filtering method with new similarity measure, and then the denoised image is sharpened by a shock-type filtering for edge and detail enhancement. For dim OCT images, in order to improve image contrast for the detection of tiny lesions, a gamma transformation is first used to enhance the images within proper gray levels. The proposed method integrating image smoothing and sharpening simultaneously obtains better visual results in experiments. PMID:29599954

Efficient OCT Image Enhancement Based on Collaborative Shock Filtering.

PubMed

Liu, Guohua; Wang, Ziyu; Mu, Guoying; Li, Peijin

2018-01-01

Efficient enhancement of noisy optical coherence tomography (OCT) images is a key task for interpreting them correctly. In this paper, to better enhance details and layered structures of a human retina image, we propose a collaborative shock filtering for OCT image denoising and enhancement. Noisy OCT image is first denoised by a collaborative filtering method with new similarity measure, and then the denoised image is sharpened by a shock-type filtering for edge and detail enhancement. For dim OCT images, in order to improve image contrast for the detection of tiny lesions, a gamma transformation is first used to enhance the images within proper gray levels. The proposed method integrating image smoothing and sharpening simultaneously obtains better visual results in experiments.

Denoising Sparse Images from GRAPPA using the Nullspace Method (DESIGN)

PubMed Central

Weller, Daniel S.; Polimeni, Jonathan R.; Grady, Leo; Wald, Lawrence L.; Adalsteinsson, Elfar; Goyal, Vivek K

2011-01-01

To accelerate magnetic resonance imaging using uniformly undersampled (nonrandom) parallel imaging beyond what is achievable with GRAPPA alone, the Denoising of Sparse Images from GRAPPA using the Nullspace method (DESIGN) is developed. The trade-off between denoising and smoothing the GRAPPA solution is studied for different levels of acceleration. Several brain images reconstructed from uniformly undersampled k-space data using DESIGN are compared against reconstructions using existing methods in terms of difference images (a qualitative measure), PSNR, and noise amplification (g-factors) as measured using the pseudo-multiple replica method. Effects of smoothing, including contrast loss, are studied in synthetic phantom data. In the experiments presented, the contrast loss and spatial resolution are competitive with existing methods. Results for several brain images demonstrate significant improvements over GRAPPA at high acceleration factors in denoising performance with limited blurring or smoothing artifacts. In addition, the measured g-factors suggest that DESIGN mitigates noise amplification better than both GRAPPA and L1 SPIR-iT (the latter limited here by uniform undersampling). PMID:22213069

A robust technique based on VLM and Frangi filter for retinal vessel extraction and denoising.

PubMed

Khan, Khan Bahadar; Khaliq, Amir A; Jalil, Abdul; Shahid, Muhammad

2018-01-01

The exploration of retinal vessel structure is colossally important on account of numerous diseases including stroke, Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) and coronary heart diseases, which can damage the retinal vessel structure. The retinal vascular network is very hard to be extracted due to its spreading and diminishing geometry and contrast variation in an image. The proposed technique consists of unique parallel processes for denoising and extraction of blood vessels in retinal images. In the preprocessing section, an adaptive histogram equalization enhances dissimilarity between the vessels and the background and morphological top-hat filters are employed to eliminate macula and optic disc, etc. To remove local noise, the difference of images is computed from the top-hat filtered image and the high-boost filtered image. Frangi filter is applied at multi scale for the enhancement of vessels possessing diverse widths. Segmentation is performed by using improved Otsu thresholding on the high-boost filtered image and Frangi's enhanced image, separately. In the postprocessing steps, a Vessel Location Map (VLM) is extracted by using raster to vector transformation. Postprocessing steps are employed in a novel way to reject misclassified vessel pixels. The final segmented image is obtained by using pixel-by-pixel AND operation between VLM and Frangi output image. The method has been rigorously analyzed on the STARE, DRIVE and HRF datasets.

HARDI DATA DENOISING USING VECTORIAL TOTAL VARIATION AND LOGARITHMIC BARRIER

PubMed Central

Kim, Yunho; Thompson, Paul M.; Vese, Luminita A.

2010-01-01

In this work, we wish to denoise HARDI (High Angular Resolution Diffusion Imaging) data arising in medical brain imaging. Diffusion imaging is a relatively new and powerful method to measure the three-dimensional profile of water diffusion at each point in the brain. These images can be used to reconstruct fiber directions and pathways in the living brain, providing detailed maps of fiber integrity and connectivity. HARDI data is a powerful new extension of diffusion imaging, which goes beyond the diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) model: mathematically, intensity data is given at every voxel and at any direction on the sphere. Unfortunately, HARDI data is usually highly contaminated with noise, depending on the b-value which is a tuning parameter pre-selected to collect the data. Larger b-values help to collect more accurate information in terms of measuring diffusivity, but more noise is generated by many factors as well. So large b-values are preferred, if we can satisfactorily reduce the noise without losing the data structure. Here we propose two variational methods to denoise HARDI data. The first one directly denoises the collected data S, while the second one denoises the so-called sADC (spherical Apparent Diffusion Coefficient), a field of radial functions derived from the data. These two quantities are related by an equation of the form S = SSexp (−b · sADC) (in the noise-free case). By applying these two different models, we will be able to determine which quantity will most accurately preserve data structure after denoising. The theoretical analysis of the proposed models is presented, together with experimental results and comparisons for denoising synthetic and real HARDI data. PMID:20802839

Study on Underwater Image Denoising Algorithm Based on Wavelet Transform

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jian, Sun; Wen, Wang

2017-02-01

This paper analyzes the application of MATLAB in underwater image processing, the transmission characteristics of the underwater laser light signal and the kinds of underwater noise has been described, the common noise suppression algorithm: Wiener filter, median filter, average filter algorithm is brought out. Then the advantages and disadvantages of each algorithm in image sharpness and edge protection areas have been compared. A hybrid filter algorithm based on wavelet transform has been proposed which can be used for Color Image Denoising. At last the PSNR and NMSE of each algorithm has been given out, which compares the ability to de-noising

Image interpolation and denoising for division of focal plane sensors using Gaussian processes.

PubMed

Gilboa, Elad; Cunningham, John P; Nehorai, Arye; Gruev, Viktor

2014-06-16

Image interpolation and denoising are important techniques in image processing. These methods are inherent to digital image acquisition as most digital cameras are composed of a 2D grid of heterogeneous imaging sensors. Current polarization imaging employ four different pixelated polarization filters, commonly referred to as division of focal plane polarization sensors. The sensors capture only partial information of the true scene, leading to a loss of spatial resolution as well as inaccuracy of the captured polarization information. Interpolation is a standard technique to recover the missing information and increase the accuracy of the captured polarization information. Here we focus specifically on Gaussian process regression as a way to perform a statistical image interpolation, where estimates of sensor noise are used to improve the accuracy of the estimated pixel information. We further exploit the inherent grid structure of this data to create a fast exact algorithm that operates in ����(N(3/2)) (vs. the naive ���� (N³)), thus making the Gaussian process method computationally tractable for image data. This modeling advance and the enabling computational advance combine to produce significant improvements over previously published interpolation methods for polarimeters, which is most pronounced in cases of low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). We provide the comprehensive mathematical model as well as experimental results of the GP interpolation performance for division of focal plane polarimeter.

Low-illumination image denoising method for wide-area search of nighttime sea surface

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Song, Ming-zhu; Qu, Hong-song; Zhang, Gui-xiang; Tao, Shu-ping; Jin, Guang

2018-05-01

In order to suppress complex mixing noise in low-illumination images for wide-area search of nighttime sea surface, a model based on total variation (TV) and split Bregman is proposed in this paper. A fidelity term based on L1 norm and a fidelity term based on L2 norm are designed considering the difference between various noise types, and the regularization mixed first-order TV and second-order TV are designed to balance the influence of details information such as texture and edge for sea surface image. The final detection result is obtained by using the high-frequency component solved from L1 norm and the low-frequency component solved from L2 norm through wavelet transform. The experimental results show that the proposed denoising model has perfect denoising performance for artificially degraded and low-illumination images, and the result of image quality assessment index for the denoising image is superior to that of the contrastive models.

Group-sparse representation with dictionary learning for medical image denoising and fusion.

PubMed

Li, Shutao; Yin, Haitao; Fang, Leyuan

2012-12-01

Recently, sparse representation has attracted a lot of interest in various areas. However, the standard sparse representation does not consider the intrinsic structure, i.e., the nonzero elements occur in clusters, called group sparsity. Furthermore, there is no dictionary learning method for group sparse representation considering the geometrical structure of space spanned by atoms. In this paper, we propose a novel dictionary learning method, called Dictionary Learning with Group Sparsity and Graph Regularization (DL-GSGR). First, the geometrical structure of atoms is modeled as the graph regularization. Then, combining group sparsity and graph regularization, the DL-GSGR is presented, which is solved by alternating the group sparse coding and dictionary updating. In this way, the group coherence of learned dictionary can be enforced small enough such that any signal can be group sparse coded effectively. Finally, group sparse representation with DL-GSGR is applied to 3-D medical image denoising and image fusion. Specifically, in 3-D medical image denoising, a 3-D processing mechanism (using the similarity among nearby slices) and temporal regularization (to perverse the correlations across nearby slices) are exploited. The experimental results on 3-D image denoising and image fusion demonstrate the superiority of our proposed denoising and fusion approaches.

Multi-threshold de-noising of electrical imaging logging data based on the wavelet packet transform

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xie, Fang; Xiao, Chengwen; Liu, Ruilin; Zhang, Lili

2017-08-01

A key problem of effectiveness evaluation for fractured-vuggy carbonatite reservoir is how to accurately extract fracture and vug information from electrical imaging logging data. Drill bits quaked during drilling and resulted in rugged surfaces of borehole walls and thus conductivity fluctuations in electrical imaging logging data. The occurrence of the conductivity fluctuations (formation background noise) directly affects the fracture/vug information extraction and reservoir effectiveness evaluation. We present a multi-threshold de-noising method based on wavelet packet transform to eliminate the influence of rugged borehole walls. The noise is present as fluctuations in button-electrode conductivity curves and as pockmarked responses in electrical imaging logging static images. The noise has responses in various scales and frequency ranges and has low conductivity compared with fractures or vugs. Our de-noising method is to decompose the data into coefficients with wavelet packet transform on a quadratic spline basis, then shrink high-frequency wavelet packet coefficients in different resolutions with minimax threshold and hard-threshold function, and finally reconstruct the thresholded coefficients. We use electrical imaging logging data collected from fractured-vuggy Ordovician carbonatite reservoir in Tarim Basin to verify the validity of the multi-threshold de-noising method. Segmentation results and extracted parameters are shown as well to prove the effectiveness of the de-noising procedure.

An unbiased risk estimator for image denoising in the presence of mixed poisson-gaussian noise.

PubMed

Le Montagner, Yoann; Angelini, Elsa D; Olivo-Marin, Jean-Christophe

2014-03-01

The behavior and performance of denoising algorithms are governed by one or several parameters, whose optimal settings depend on the content of the processed image and the characteristics of the noise, and are generally designed to minimize the mean squared error (MSE) between the denoised image returned by the algorithm and a virtual ground truth. In this paper, we introduce a new Poisson-Gaussian unbiased risk estimator (PG-URE) of the MSE applicable to a mixed Poisson-Gaussian noise model that unifies the widely used Gaussian and Poisson noise models in fluorescence bioimaging applications. We propose a stochastic methodology to evaluate this estimator in the case when little is known about the internal machinery of the considered denoising algorithm, and we analyze both theoretically and empirically the characteristics of the PG-URE estimator. Finally, we evaluate the PG-URE-driven parametrization for three standard denoising algorithms, with and without variance stabilizing transforms, and different characteristics of the Poisson-Gaussian noise mixture.

Adaptive nonlocal means filtering based on local noise level for CT denoising

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Li, Zhoubo; Trzasko, Joshua D.; Lake, David S.

2014-01-15

Purpose: To develop and evaluate an image-domain noise reduction method based on a modified nonlocal means (NLM) algorithm that is adaptive to local noise level of CT images and to implement this method in a time frame consistent with clinical workflow. Methods: A computationally efficient technique for local noise estimation directly from CT images was developed. A forward projection, based on a 2D fan-beam approximation, was used to generate the projection data, with a noise model incorporating the effects of the bowtie filter and automatic exposure control. The noise propagation from projection data to images was analytically derived. The analyticalmore » noise map was validated using repeated scans of a phantom. A 3D NLM denoising algorithm was modified to adapt its denoising strength locally based on this noise map. The performance of this adaptive NLM filter was evaluated in phantom studies in terms of in-plane and cross-plane high-contrast spatial resolution, noise power spectrum (NPS), subjective low-contrast spatial resolution using the American College of Radiology (ACR) accreditation phantom, and objective low-contrast spatial resolution using a channelized Hotelling model observer (CHO). Graphical processing units (GPU) implementation of this noise map calculation and the adaptive NLM filtering were developed to meet demands of clinical workflow. Adaptive NLM was piloted on lower dose scans in clinical practice. Results: The local noise level estimation matches the noise distribution determined from multiple repetitive scans of a phantom, demonstrated by small variations in the ratio map between the analytical noise map and the one calculated from repeated scans. The phantom studies demonstrated that the adaptive NLM filter can reduce noise substantially without degrading the high-contrast spatial resolution, as illustrated by modulation transfer function and slice sensitivity profile results. The NPS results show that adaptive NLM denoising preserves the shape and peak frequency of the noise power spectrum better than commercial smoothing kernels, and indicate that the spatial resolution at low contrast levels is not significantly degraded. Both the subjective evaluation using the ACR phantom and the objective evaluation on a low-contrast detection task using a CHO model observer demonstrate an improvement on low-contrast performance. The GPU implementation can process and transfer 300 slice images within 5 min. On patient data, the adaptive NLM algorithm provides more effective denoising of CT data throughout a volume than standard NLM, and may allow significant lowering of radiation dose. After a two week pilot study of lower dose CT urography and CT enterography exams, both GI and GU radiology groups elected to proceed with permanent implementation of adaptive NLM in their GI and GU CT practices. Conclusions: This work describes and validates a computationally efficient technique for noise map estimation directly from CT images, and an adaptive NLM filtering based on this noise map, on phantom and patient data. Both the noise map calculation and the adaptive NLM filtering can be performed in times that allow integration with clinical workflow. The adaptive NLM algorithm provides effective denoising of CT data throughout a volume, and may allow significant lowering of radiation dose.« less

Dynamic Denoising of Tracking Sequences

PubMed Central

Michailovich, Oleg; Tannenbaum, Allen

2009-01-01

In this paper, we describe an approach to the problem of simultaneously enhancing image sequences and tracking the objects of interest represented by the latter. The enhancement part of the algorithm is based on Bayesian wavelet denoising, which has been chosen due to its exceptional ability to incorporate diverse a priori information into the process of image recovery. In particular, we demonstrate that, in dynamic settings, useful statistical priors can come both from some reasonable assumptions on the properties of the image to be enhanced as well as from the images that have already been observed before the current scene. Using such priors forms the main contribution of the present paper which is the proposal of the dynamic denoising as a tool for simultaneously enhancing and tracking image sequences. Within the proposed framework, the previous observations of a dynamic scene are employed to enhance its present observation. The mechanism that allows the fusion of the information within successive image frames is Bayesian estimation, while transferring the useful information between the images is governed by a Kalman filter that is used for both prediction and estimation of the dynamics of tracked objects. Therefore, in this methodology, the processes of target tracking and image enhancement “collaborate” in an interlacing manner, rather than being applied separately. The dynamic denoising is demonstrated on several examples of SAR imagery. The results demonstrated in this paper indicate a number of advantages of the proposed dynamic denoising over “static” approaches, in which the tracking images are enhanced independently of each other. PMID:18482881

Nonlocal maximum likelihood estimation method for denoising multiple-coil magnetic resonance images.

PubMed

Rajan, Jeny; Veraart, Jelle; Van Audekerke, Johan; Verhoye, Marleen; Sijbers, Jan

2012-12-01

Effective denoising is vital for proper analysis and accurate quantitative measurements from magnetic resonance (MR) images. Even though many methods were proposed to denoise MR images, only few deal with the estimation of true signal from MR images acquired with phased-array coils. If the magnitude data from phased array coils are reconstructed as the root sum of squares, in the absence of noise correlations and subsampling, the data is assumed to follow a non central-χ distribution. However, when the k-space is subsampled to increase the acquisition speed (as in GRAPPA like methods), noise becomes spatially varying. In this note, we propose a method to denoise multiple-coil acquired MR images. Both the non central-χ distribution and the spatially varying nature of the noise is taken into account in the proposed method. Experiments were conducted on both simulated and real data sets to validate and to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Twofold processing for denoising ultrasound medical images.

PubMed

Kishore, P V V; Kumar, K V V; Kumar, D Anil; Prasad, M V D; Goutham, E N D; Rahul, R; Krishna, C B S Vamsi; Sandeep, Y

2015-01-01

Ultrasound medical (US) imaging non-invasively pictures inside of a human body for disease diagnostics. Speckle noise attacks ultrasound images degrading their visual quality. A twofold processing algorithm is proposed in this work to reduce this multiplicative speckle noise. First fold used block based thresholding, both hard (BHT) and soft (BST), on pixels in wavelet domain with 8, 16, 32 and 64 non-overlapping block sizes. This first fold process is a better denoising method for reducing speckle and also inducing object of interest blurring. The second fold process initiates to restore object boundaries and texture with adaptive wavelet fusion. The degraded object restoration in block thresholded US image is carried through wavelet coefficient fusion of object in original US mage and block thresholded US image. Fusion rules and wavelet decomposition levels are made adaptive for each block using gradient histograms with normalized differential mean (NDF) to introduce highest level of contrast between the denoised pixels and the object pixels in the resultant image. Thus the proposed twofold methods are named as adaptive NDF block fusion with hard and soft thresholding (ANBF-HT and ANBF-ST). The results indicate visual quality improvement to an interesting level with the proposed twofold processing, where the first fold removes noise and second fold restores object properties. Peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), normalized cross correlation coefficient (NCC), edge strength (ES), image quality Index (IQI) and structural similarity index (SSIM), measure the quantitative quality of the twofold processing technique. Validation of the proposed method is done by comparing with anisotropic diffusion (AD), total variational filtering (TVF) and empirical mode decomposition (EMD) for enhancement of US images. The US images are provided by AMMA hospital radiology labs at Vijayawada, India.

Sparse-coding denoising applied to reversible conformational switching of a porphyrin self-assembled monolayer induced by scanning tunnelling microscopy.

PubMed

Oliveira, J; Bragança, A M; Alcácer, L; Morgado, J; Figueiredo, M; Bioucas-Dias, J; Ferreira, Q

2018-04-14

Scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) was used to induce conformational molecular switching on a self-assembled monolayer of zinc-octaethylporphyrin on a graphite/tetradecane interface at room temperature. A reversible conformational change controlled by applying a tip voltage was observed. Consecutive STM images acquired at alternating tip voltages showed that at 0.4 V the porphyrin monolayer presents a molecular arrangement formed by alternate rows with two different types of structural conformations and when the potential is increased to 0.7 V the monolayer presents only one type of conformation. In this paper, we characterize these porphyrin conformational dynamics by analyzing the STM images, which were improved for better quality and interpretation by means of a denoising algorithm, adapted to process STM images from state of the art image processing and analysis methods. STM remains the best technique to 'see' and to manipulate the matter at atomic scale. A very sharp tip a few angstroms of the surface can provide images of molecules and atoms with a powerful resolution. However, these images are strongly affected by noise which is necessary to correct and eliminate. This paper is about new computational tools specifically developed to denoise the images acquired with STM. The new algorithms were tested in STM images, obtained at room temperature, of porphyrin monolayer which presents reversible conformational change in function of the tip bias voltage. Images with high resolution, acquired in real time, show that the porphyrins have different molecular arrangements whether the tip voltage is 0.4 V or 0.7 V. © 2018 The Authors Journal of Microscopy © 2018 Royal Microscopical Society.

Standardized processing of MALDI imaging raw data for enhancement of weak analyte signals in mouse models of gastric cancer and Alzheimer's disease.

PubMed

Schwartz, Matthias; Meyer, Björn; Wirnitzer, Bernhard; Hopf, Carsten

2015-03-01

Conventional mass spectrometry image preprocessing methods used for denoising, such as the Savitzky-Golay smoothing or discrete wavelet transformation, typically do not only remove noise but also weak signals. Recently, memory-efficient principal component analysis (PCA) in conjunction with random projections (RP) has been proposed for reversible compression and analysis of large mass spectrometry imaging datasets. It considers single-pixel spectra in their local context and consequently offers the prospect of using information from the spectra of adjacent pixels for denoising or signal enhancement. However, little systematic analysis of key RP-PCA parameters has been reported so far, and the utility and validity of this method for context-dependent enhancement of known medically or pharmacologically relevant weak analyte signals in linear-mode matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) mass spectra has not been explored yet. Here, we investigate MALDI imaging datasets from mouse models of Alzheimer's disease and gastric cancer to systematically assess the importance of selecting the right number of random projections k and of principal components (PCs) L for reconstructing reproducibly denoised images after compression. We provide detailed quantitative data for comparison of RP-PCA-denoising with the Savitzky-Golay and wavelet-based denoising in these mouse models as a resource for the mass spectrometry imaging community. Most importantly, we demonstrate that RP-PCA preprocessing can enhance signals of low-intensity amyloid-β peptide isoforms such as Aβ1-26 even in sparsely distributed Alzheimer's β-amyloid plaques and that it enables enhanced imaging of multiply acetylated histone H4 isoforms in response to pharmacological histone deacetylase inhibition in vivo. We conclude that RP-PCA denoising may be a useful preprocessing step in biomarker discovery workflows.

Implementation of dictionary pair learning algorithm for image quality improvement

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vimala, C.; Aruna Priya, P.

2018-04-01

This paper proposes an image denoising on dictionary pair learning algorithm. Visual information is transmitted in the form of digital images is becoming a major method of communication in the modern age, but the image obtained after transmissions is often corrupted with noise. The received image needs processing before it can be used in applications. Image denoising involves the manipulation of the image data to produce a visually high quality image.

Application of reversible denoising and lifting steps with step skipping to color space transforms for improved lossless compression

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Starosolski, Roman

2016-07-01

Reversible denoising and lifting steps (RDLS) are lifting steps integrated with denoising filters in such a way that, despite the inherently irreversible nature of denoising, they are perfectly reversible. We investigated the application of RDLS to reversible color space transforms: RCT, YCoCg-R, RDgDb, and LDgEb. In order to improve RDLS effects, we propose a heuristic for image-adaptive denoising filter selection, a fast estimator of the compressed image bitrate, and a special filter that may result in skipping of the steps. We analyzed the properties of the presented methods, paying special attention to their usefulness from a practical standpoint. For a diverse image test-set and lossless JPEG-LS, JPEG 2000, and JPEG XR algorithms, RDLS improves the bitrates of all the examined transforms. The most interesting results were obtained for an estimation-based heuristic filter selection out of a set of seven filters; the cost of this variant was similar to or lower than the transform cost, and it improved the average lossless JPEG 2000 bitrates by 2.65% for RDgDb and by over 1% for other transforms; bitrates of certain images were improved to a significantly greater extent.

An approach to analyze the breast tissues in infrared images using nonlinear adaptive level sets and Riesz transform features.

PubMed

Prabha, S; Suganthi, S S; Sujatha, C M

2015-01-01

Breast thermography is a potential imaging method for the early detection of breast cancer. The pathological conditions can be determined by measuring temperature variations in the abnormal breast regions. Accurate delineation of breast tissues is reported as a challenging task due to inherent limitations of infrared images such as low contrast, low signal to noise ratio and absence of clear edges. Segmentation technique is attempted to delineate the breast tissues by detecting proper lower breast boundaries and inframammary folds. Characteristic features are extracted to analyze the asymmetrical thermal variations in normal and abnormal breast tissues. An automated analysis of thermal variations of breast tissues is attempted using nonlinear adaptive level sets and Riesz transform. Breast thermal images are initially subjected to Stein's unbiased risk estimate based orthonormal wavelet denoising. These denoised images are enhanced using contrast-limited adaptive histogram equalization method. The breast tissues are then segmented using non-linear adaptive level set method. The phase map of enhanced image is integrated into the level set framework for final boundary estimation. The segmented results are validated against the corresponding ground truth images using overlap and regional similarity metrics. The segmented images are further processed with Riesz transform and structural texture features are derived from the transformed coefficients to analyze pathological conditions of breast tissues. Results show that the estimated average signal to noise ratio of denoised images and average sharpness of enhanced images are improved by 38% and 6% respectively. The interscale consideration adopted in the denoising algorithm is able to improve signal to noise ratio by preserving edges. The proposed segmentation framework could delineate the breast tissues with high degree of correlation (97%) between the segmented and ground truth areas. Also, the average segmentation accuracy and sensitivity are found to be 98%. Similarly, the maximum regional overlap between segmented and ground truth images obtained using volume similarity measure is observed to be 99%. Directionality as a feature, showed a considerable difference between normal and abnormal tissues which is found to be 11%. The proposed framework for breast thermal image analysis that is aided with necessary preprocessing is found to be useful in assisting the early diagnosis of breast abnormalities.

Unmixing-Based Denoising as a Pre-Processing Step for Coral Reef Analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cerra, D.; Traganos, D.; Gege, P.; Reinartz, P.

2017-05-01

Coral reefs, among the world's most biodiverse and productive submerged habitats, have faced several mass bleaching events due to climate change during the past 35 years. In the course of this century, global warming and ocean acidification are expected to cause corals to become increasingly rare on reef systems. This will result in a sharp decrease in the biodiversity of reef communities and carbonate reef structures. Coral reefs may be mapped, characterized and monitored through remote sensing. Hyperspectral images in particular excel in being used in coral monitoring, being characterized by very rich spectral information, which results in a strong discrimination power to characterize a target of interest, and separate healthy corals from bleached ones. Being submerged habitats, coral reef systems are difficult to analyse in airborne or satellite images, as relevant information is conveyed in bands in the blue range which exhibit lower signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with respect to other spectral ranges; furthermore, water is absorbing most of the incident solar radiation, further decreasing the SNR. Derivative features, which are important in coral analysis, result greatly affected by the resulting noise present in relevant spectral bands, justifying the need of new denoising techniques able to keep local spatial and spectral features. In this paper, Unmixing-based Denoising (UBD) is used to enable analysis of a hyperspectral image acquired over a coral reef system in the Red Sea based on derivative features. UBD reconstructs pixelwise a dataset with reduced noise effects, by forcing each spectrum to a linear combination of other reference spectra, exploiting the high dimensionality of hyperspectral datasets. Results show clear enhancements with respect to traditional denoising methods based on spatial and spectral smoothing, facilitating the coral detection task.

Diffusion Weighted Image Denoising Using Overcomplete Local PCA

PubMed Central

Manjón, José V.; Coupé, Pierrick; Concha, Luis; Buades, Antonio; Collins, D. Louis; Robles, Montserrat

2013-01-01

Diffusion Weighted Images (DWI) normally shows a low Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) due to the presence of noise from the measurement process that complicates and biases the estimation of quantitative diffusion parameters. In this paper, a new denoising methodology is proposed that takes into consideration the multicomponent nature of multi-directional DWI datasets such as those employed in diffusion imaging. This new filter reduces random noise in multicomponent DWI by locally shrinking less significant Principal Components using an overcomplete approach. The proposed method is compared with state-of-the-art methods using synthetic and real clinical MR images, showing improved performance in terms of denoising quality and estimation of diffusion parameters. PMID:24019889

Movie denoising by average of warped lines.

PubMed

Bertalmío, Marcelo; Caselles, Vicent; Pardo, Alvaro

2007-09-01

Here, we present an efficient method for movie denoising that does not require any motion estimation. The method is based on the well-known fact that averaging several realizations of a random variable reduces the variance. For each pixel to be denoised, we look for close similar samples along the level surface passing through it. With these similar samples, we estimate the denoised pixel. The method to find close similar samples is done via warping lines in spatiotemporal neighborhoods. For that end, we present an algorithm based on a method for epipolar line matching in stereo pairs which has per-line complexity O (N), where N is the number of columns in the image. In this way, when applied to the image sequence, our algorithm is computationally efficient, having a complexity of the order of the total number of pixels. Furthermore, we show that the presented method is unsupervised and is adapted to denoise image sequences with an additive white noise while respecting the visual details on the movie frames. We have also experimented with other types of noise with satisfactory results.

Wavelet Denoising of Radio Observations of Rotating Radio Transients (RRATs): Improved Timing Parameters for Eight RRATs

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Jiang, M.; Schmid, N. A.; Cao, Z.-C.

Rotating radio transients (RRATs) are sporadically emitting pulsars detectable only through searches for single pulses. While over 100 RRATs have been detected, only a small fraction (roughly 20%) have phase-connected timing solutions, which are critical for determining how they relate to other neutron star populations. Detecting more pulses in order to achieve solutions is key to understanding their physical nature. Astronomical signals collected by radio telescopes contain noise from many sources, making the detection of weak pulses difficult. Applying a denoising method to raw time series prior to performing a single-pulse search typically leads to a more accurate estimation ofmore » their times of arrival (TOAs). Taking into account some features of RRAT pulses and noise, we present a denoising method based on wavelet data analysis, an image-processing technique. Assuming that the spin period of an RRAT is known, we estimate the frequency spectrum components contributing to the composition of RRAT pulses. This allows us to suppress the noise, which contributes to other frequencies. We apply the wavelet denoising method including selective wavelet reconstruction and wavelet shrinkage to the de-dispersed time series of eight RRATs with existing timing solutions. The signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) of most pulses are improved after wavelet denoising. Compared to the conventional approach, we measure 12%–69% more TOAs for the eight RRATs. The new timing solutions for the eight RRATs show 16%–90% smaller estimation error of most parameters. Thus, we conclude that wavelet analysis is an effective tool for denoising RRATs signal.« less

Sensitive test for sea mine identification based on polarization-aided image processing.

PubMed

Leonard, I; Alfalou, A; Brosseau, C

2013-12-02

Techniques are widely sought to detect and identify sea mines. This issue is characterized by complicated mine shapes and underwater light propagation dependencies. In a preliminary study we use a preprocessing step for denoising underwater images before applying the algorithm for mine detection. Once a mine is detected, the protocol for identifying it is activated. Among many correlation filters, we have focused our attention on the asymmetric segmented phase-only filter for quantifying the recognition rate because it allows us to significantly increase the number of reference images in the fabrication of this filter. Yet they are not entirely satisfactory in terms of recognition rate and the obtained images revealed to be of low quality. In this report, we propose a way to improve upon this preliminary study by using a single wavelength polarimetric camera in order to denoise the images. This permits us to enhance images and improve depth visibility. We present illustrative results using in situ polarization imaging of a target through a milk-water mixture and demonstrate that our challenging objective of increasing the detection rate and decreasing the false alarm rate has been achieved.

Wavelet-domain de-noising technique for THz pulsed spectroscopy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chernomyrdin, Nikita V.; Zaytsev, Kirill I.; Gavdush, Arsenii A.; Fokina, Irina N.; Karasik, Valeriy E.; Reshetov, Igor V.; Kudrin, Konstantin G.; Nosov, Pavel A.; Yurchenko, Stanislav O.

2014-09-01

De-noising of terahertz (THz) pulsed spectroscopy (TPS) data is an essential problem, since a noise in the TPS system data prevents correct reconstruction of the sample spectral dielectric properties and to perform the sample internal structure studying. There are certain regions in TPS signal Fourier spectrum, where Fourier-domain signal-to-noise ratio is relatively small. Effective de-noising might potentially expand the range of spectrometer spectral sensitivity and reduce the time of waveform registration, which is an essential problem for biomedical applications of TPS. In this work, it is shown how the recent progress in signal processing in wavelet-domain could be used for TPS waveforms de-noising. It demonstrates the ability to perform effective de-noising of TPS data using the algorithm of the Fast Wavelet Transform (FWT). The results of the optimal wavelet basis selection and wavelet-domain thresholding technique selection are reported. Developed technique is implemented for reconstruction of in vivo healthy and deseased skin samplesspectral characteristics at THz frequency range.

Convolutional auto-encoder for image denoising of ultra-low-dose CT.

PubMed

Nishio, Mizuho; Nagashima, Chihiro; Hirabayashi, Saori; Ohnishi, Akinori; Sasaki, Kaori; Sagawa, Tomoyuki; Hamada, Masayuki; Yamashita, Tatsuo

2017-08-01

The purpose of this study was to validate a patch-based image denoising method for ultra-low-dose CT images. Neural network with convolutional auto-encoder and pairs of standard-dose CT and ultra-low-dose CT image patches were used for image denoising. The performance of the proposed method was measured by using a chest phantom. Standard-dose and ultra-low-dose CT images of the chest phantom were acquired. The tube currents for standard-dose and ultra-low-dose CT were 300 and 10 mA, respectively. Ultra-low-dose CT images were denoised with our proposed method using neural network, large-scale nonlocal mean, and block-matching and 3D filtering. Five radiologists and three technologists assessed the denoised ultra-low-dose CT images visually and recorded their subjective impressions of streak artifacts, noise other than streak artifacts, visualization of pulmonary vessels, and overall image quality. For the streak artifacts, noise other than streak artifacts, and visualization of pulmonary vessels, the results of our proposed method were statistically better than those of block-matching and 3D filtering (p-values < 0.05). On the other hand, the difference in the overall image quality between our proposed method and block-matching and 3D filtering was not statistically significant (p-value = 0.07272). The p-values obtained between our proposed method and large-scale nonlocal mean were all less than 0.05. Neural network with convolutional auto-encoder could be trained using pairs of standard-dose and ultra-low-dose CT image patches. According to the visual assessment by radiologists and technologists, the performance of our proposed method was superior to that of large-scale nonlocal mean and block-matching and 3D filtering.

Automated retinal layer segmentation and characterization

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Luisi, Jonathan; Briley, David; Boretsky, Adam; Motamedi, Massoud

2014-05-01

Spectral Domain Optical Coherence Tomography (SD-OCT) is a valuable diagnostic tool in both clinical and research settings. The depth-resolved intensity profiles generated by light backscattered from discrete layers of the retina provide a non-invasive method of investigating progressive diseases and injury within the eye. This study demonstrates the application of steerable convolution filters capable of automatically separating gradient orientations to identify edges and delineate tissue boundaries. The edge maps were recombined to measure thickness of individual retinal layers. This technique was successfully applied to longitudinally monitor changes in retinal morphology in a mouse model of laser-induced choroidal neovascularization (CNV) and human data from age-related macular degeneration patients. The steerable filters allow for direct segmentation of noisy images, while novel recombination of weaker segmentations allow for denoising post-segmentation. The segmentation before denoising strategy allows the rapid detection of thin retinal layers even under suboptimal imaging conditions.

A multichannel block-matching denoising algorithm for spectral photon-counting CT images.

PubMed

Harrison, Adam P; Xu, Ziyue; Pourmorteza, Amir; Bluemke, David A; Mollura, Daniel J

2017-06-01

We present a denoising algorithm designed for a whole-body prototype photon-counting computed tomography (PCCT) scanner with up to 4 energy thresholds and associated energy-binned images. Spectral PCCT images can exhibit low signal to noise ratios (SNRs) due to the limited photon counts in each simultaneously-acquired energy bin. To help address this, our denoising method exploits the correlation and exact alignment between energy bins, adapting the highly-effective block-matching 3D (BM3D) denoising algorithm for PCCT. The original single-channel BM3D algorithm operates patch-by-patch. For each small patch in the image, a patch grouping action collects similar patches from the rest of the image, which are then collaboratively filtered together. The resulting performance hinges on accurate patch grouping. Our improved multi-channel version, called BM3D_PCCT, incorporates two improvements. First, BM3D_PCCT uses a more accurate shared patch grouping based on the image reconstructed from photons detected in all 4 energy bins. Second, BM3D_PCCT performs a cross-channel decorrelation, adding a further dimension to the collaborative filtering process. These two improvements produce a more effective algorithm for PCCT denoising. Preliminary results compare BM3D_PCCT against BM3D_Naive, which denoises each energy bin independently. Experiments use a three-contrast PCCT image of a canine abdomen. Within five regions of interest, selected from paraspinal muscle, liver, and visceral fat, BM3D_PCCT reduces the noise standard deviation by 65.0%, compared to 40.4% for BM3D_Naive. Attenuation values of the contrast agents in calibration vials also cluster much tighter to their respective lines of best fit. Mean angular differences (in degrees) for the original, BM3D_Naive, and BM3D_PCCT images, respectively, were 15.61, 7.34, and 4.45 (iodine); 12.17, 7.17, and 4.39 (galodinium); and 12.86, 6.33, and 3.96 (bismuth). We outline a multi-channel denoising algorithm tailored for spectral PCCT images, demonstrating improved performance over an independent, yet state-of-the-art, single-channel approach. Published 2017. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.

Image denoising by sparse 3-D transform-domain collaborative filtering.

PubMed

Dabov, Kostadin; Foi, Alessandro; Katkovnik, Vladimir; Egiazarian, Karen

2007-08-01

We propose a novel image denoising strategy based on an enhanced sparse representation in transform domain. The enhancement of the sparsity is achieved by grouping similar 2-D image fragments (e.g., blocks) into 3-D data arrays which we call "groups." Collaborative filtering is a special procedure developed to deal with these 3-D groups. We realize it using the three successive steps: 3-D transformation of a group, shrinkage of the transform spectrum, and inverse 3-D transformation. The result is a 3-D estimate that consists of the jointly filtered grouped image blocks. By attenuating the noise, the collaborative filtering reveals even the finest details shared by grouped blocks and, at the same time, it preserves the essential unique features of each individual block. The filtered blocks are then returned to their original positions. Because these blocks are overlapping, for each pixel, we obtain many different estimates which need to be combined. Aggregation is a particular averaging procedure which is exploited to take advantage of this redundancy. A significant improvement is obtained by a specially developed collaborative Wiener filtering. An algorithm based on this novel denoising strategy and its efficient implementation are presented in full detail; an extension to color-image denoising is also developed. The experimental results demonstrate that this computationally scalable algorithm achieves state-of-the-art denoising performance in terms of both peak signal-to-noise ratio and subjective visual quality.

SU-D-12A-02: DeTECT, a Method to Enhance Soft Tissue Contrast From Mega Voltage CT

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Sheng, K; Gou, S; Qi, S

Purpose: MVCT images have been used on TomoTherapy system to align patients based on bony anatomies but its usefulness for soft tissue registration, delineation and adaptive radiation therapy is severely limited due to minimal photoelectric interaction and prominent presence of noise resulting from low detector quantum efficiency of megavoltage x-rays. We aim to utilize a non-local means denoising method and texture analysis to recover the soft tissue information for MVCT. Methods: A block matching 3D (BM3D) algorithm was adapted to reduce the noise while keeping the texture information of the MVCT images. BM3D is an imaging denoising algorithm developed frommore » non-local means methods. BM3D additionally creates 3D groups by stacking 2D patches by the order of similarity. 3D denoising operation is then performed. The resultant 3D group is inversely transformed back to 2D images. In this study, BM3D was applied to MVCT images of a CT quality phantom, a head and neck and a prostate patient. Following denoising, imaging texture was enhanced to create the denoised and texture enhanced CT (DeTECT). Results: The original MVCT images show prevalent noise and poor soft tissue contrast. By applying BM3D denoising and texture enhancement, all MVCT images show remarkable improvements. For the phantom, the contrast to noise ratio for the low contrast plug was improved from 2.2 to 13.1 without compromising line pair conspicuity. For the head and neck patient, the lymph nodes and vein in the carotid space inconspicuous in the original MVCT image becomes highly visible in DeTECT. For the prostate patient, the boundary between the bladder and the prostate in the original MVCT is successfully recovered. Both results are visually validated by kVCT images of the corresponding patients. Conclusion: DeTECT showed the promise to drastically improve the soft tissue contrast of MVCT for image guided radiotherapy and adaptive radiotherapy.« less

Sparse Image Reconstruction on the Sphere: Analysis and Synthesis.

PubMed

Wallis, Christopher G R; Wiaux, Yves; McEwen, Jason D

2017-11-01

We develop techniques to solve ill-posed inverse problems on the sphere by sparse regularization, exploiting sparsity in both axisymmetric and directional scale-discretized wavelet space. Denoising, inpainting, and deconvolution problems and combinations thereof, are considered as examples. Inverse problems are solved in both the analysis and synthesis settings, with a number of different sampling schemes. The most effective approach is that with the most restricted solution-space, which depends on the interplay between the adopted sampling scheme, the selection of the analysis/synthesis problem, and any weighting of the l 1 norm appearing in the regularization problem. More efficient sampling schemes on the sphere improve reconstruction fidelity by restricting the solution-space and also by improving sparsity in wavelet space. We apply the technique to denoise Planck 353-GHz observations, improving the ability to extract the structure of Galactic dust emission, which is important for studying Galactic magnetism.

Combined self-learning based single-image super-resolution and dual-tree complex wavelet transform denoising for medical images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yang, Guang; Ye, Xujiong; Slabaugh, Greg; Keegan, Jennifer; Mohiaddin, Raad; Firmin, David

2016-03-01

In this paper, we propose a novel self-learning based single-image super-resolution (SR) method, which is coupled with dual-tree complex wavelet transform (DTCWT) based denoising to better recover high-resolution (HR) medical images. Unlike previous methods, this self-learning based SR approach enables us to reconstruct HR medical images from a single low-resolution (LR) image without extra training on HR image datasets in advance. The relationships between the given image and its scaled down versions are modeled using support vector regression with sparse coding and dictionary learning, without explicitly assuming reoccurrence or self-similarity across image scales. In addition, we perform DTCWT based denoising to initialize the HR images at each scale instead of simple bicubic interpolation. We evaluate our method on a variety of medical images. Both quantitative and qualitative results show that the proposed approach outperforms bicubic interpolation and state-of-the-art single-image SR methods while effectively removing noise.

Exploring the impact of wavelet-based denoising in the classification of remote sensing hyperspectral images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Quesada-Barriuso, Pablo; Heras, Dora B.; Argüello, Francisco

2016-10-01

The classification of remote sensing hyperspectral images for land cover applications is a very intensive topic. In the case of supervised classification, Support Vector Machines (SVMs) play a dominant role. Recently, the Extreme Learning Machine algorithm (ELM) has been extensively used. The classification scheme previously published by the authors, and called WT-EMP, introduces spatial information in the classification process by means of an Extended Morphological Profile (EMP) that is created from features extracted by wavelets. In addition, the hyperspectral image is denoised in the 2-D spatial domain, also using wavelets and it is joined to the EMP via a stacked vector. In this paper, the scheme is improved achieving two goals. The first one is to reduce the classification time while preserving the accuracy of the classification by using ELM instead of SVM. The second one is to improve the accuracy results by performing not only a 2-D denoising for every spectral band, but also a previous additional 1-D spectral signature denoising applied to each pixel vector of the image. For each denoising the image is transformed by applying a 1-D or 2-D wavelet transform, and then a NeighShrink thresholding is applied. Improvements in terms of classification accuracy are obtained, especially for images with close regions in the classification reference map, because in these cases the accuracy of the classification in the edges between classes is more relevant.

Improving wavelet denoising based on an in-depth analysis of the camera color processing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Seybold, Tamara; Plichta, Mathias; Stechele, Walter

2015-02-01

While Denoising is an extensively studied task in signal processing research, most denoising methods are designed and evaluated using readily processed image data, e.g. the well-known Kodak data set. The noise model is usually additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). This kind of test data does not correspond to nowadays real-world image data taken with a digital camera. Using such unrealistic data to test, optimize and compare denoising algorithms may lead to incorrect parameter tuning or suboptimal choices in research on real-time camera denoising algorithms. In this paper we derive a precise analysis of the noise characteristics for the different steps in the color processing. Based on real camera noise measurements and simulation of the processing steps, we obtain a good approximation for the noise characteristics. We further show how this approximation can be used in standard wavelet denoising methods. We improve the wavelet hard thresholding and bivariate thresholding based on our noise analysis results. Both the visual quality and objective quality metrics show the advantage of the proposed method. As the method is implemented using look-up-tables that are calculated before the denoising step, our method can be implemented with very low computational complexity and can process HD video sequences real-time in an FPGA.

SAVI: Synthetic apertures for long-range, subdiffraction-limited visible imaging using Fourier ptychography

PubMed Central

Holloway, Jason; Wu, Yicheng; Sharma, Manoj K.; Cossairt, Oliver; Veeraraghavan, Ashok

2017-01-01

Synthetic aperture radar is a well-known technique for improving resolution in radio imaging. Extending these synthetic aperture techniques to the visible light domain is not straightforward because optical receivers cannot measure phase information. We propose to use macroscopic Fourier ptychography (FP) as a practical means of creating a synthetic aperture for visible imaging to achieve subdiffraction-limited resolution. We demonstrate the first working prototype for macroscopic FP in a reflection imaging geometry that is capable of imaging optically rough objects. In addition, a novel image space denoising regularization is introduced during phase retrieval to reduce the effects of speckle and improve perceptual quality of the recovered high-resolution image. Our approach is validated experimentally where the resolution of various diffuse objects is improved sixfold. PMID:28439550

Electrocardiogram signal denoising based on empirical mode decomposition technique: an overview

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Han, G.; Lin, B.; Xu, Z.

2017-03-01

Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal is nonlinear and non-stationary weak signal which reflects whether the heart is functioning normally or abnormally. ECG signal is susceptible to various kinds of noises such as high/low frequency noises, powerline interference and baseline wander. Hence, the removal of noises from ECG signal becomes a vital link in the ECG signal processing and plays a significant role in the detection and diagnosis of heart diseases. The review will describe the recent developments of ECG signal denoising based on Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) technique including high frequency noise removal, powerline interference separation, baseline wander correction, the combining of EMD and Other Methods, EEMD technique. EMD technique is a quite potential and prospective but not perfect method in the application of processing nonlinear and non-stationary signal like ECG signal. The EMD combined with other algorithms is a good solution to improve the performance of noise cancellation. The pros and cons of EMD technique in ECG signal denoising are discussed in detail. Finally, the future work and challenges in ECG signal denoising based on EMD technique are clarified.

Performance comparison of denoising filters for source camera identification

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cortiana, A.; Conotter, V.; Boato, G.; De Natale, F. G. B.

2011-02-01

Source identification for digital content is one of the main branches of digital image forensics. It relies on the extraction of the photo-response non-uniformity (PRNU) noise as a unique intrinsic fingerprint that efficiently characterizes the digital device which generated the content. Such noise is estimated as the difference between the content and its de-noised version obtained via denoising filter processing. This paper proposes a performance comparison of different denoising filters for source identification purposes. In particular, results achieved with a sophisticated 3D filter are presented and discussed with respect to state-of-the-art denoising filters previously employed in such a context.

Fast and accurate denoising method applied to very high resolution optical remote sensing images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Masse, Antoine; Lefèvre, Sébastien; Binet, Renaud; Artigues, Stéphanie; Lassalle, Pierre; Blanchet, Gwendoline; Baillarin, Simon

2017-10-01

Restoration of Very High Resolution (VHR) optical Remote Sensing Image (RSI) is critical and leads to the problem of removing instrumental noise while keeping integrity of relevant information. Improving denoising in an image processing chain implies increasing image quality and improving performance of all following tasks operated by experts (photo-interpretation, cartography, etc.) or by algorithms (land cover mapping, change detection, 3D reconstruction, etc.). In a context of large industrial VHR image production, the selected denoising method should optimized accuracy and robustness with relevant information and saliency conservation, and rapidity due to the huge amount of data acquired and/or archived. Very recent research in image processing leads to a fast and accurate algorithm called Non Local Bayes (NLB) that we propose to adapt and optimize for VHR RSIs. This method is well suited for mass production thanks to its best trade-off between accuracy and computational complexity compared to other state-of-the-art methods. NLB is based on a simple principle: similar structures in an image have similar noise distribution and thus can be denoised with the same noise estimation. In this paper, we describe in details algorithm operations and performances, and analyze parameter sensibilities on various typical real areas observed in VHR RSIs.

Absolute phase estimation: adaptive local denoising and global unwrapping.

PubMed

Bioucas-Dias, Jose; Katkovnik, Vladimir; Astola, Jaakko; Egiazarian, Karen

2008-10-10

The paper attacks absolute phase estimation with a two-step approach: the first step applies an adaptive local denoising scheme to the modulo-2 pi noisy phase; the second step applies a robust phase unwrapping algorithm to the denoised modulo-2 pi phase obtained in the first step. The adaptive local modulo-2 pi phase denoising is a new algorithm based on local polynomial approximations. The zero-order and the first-order approximations of the phase are calculated in sliding windows of varying size. The zero-order approximation is used for pointwise adaptive window size selection, whereas the first-order approximation is used to filter the phase in the obtained windows. For phase unwrapping, we apply the recently introduced robust (in the sense of discontinuity preserving) PUMA unwrapping algorithm [IEEE Trans. Image Process.16, 698 (2007)] to the denoised wrapped phase. Simulations give evidence that the proposed algorithm yields state-of-the-art performance, enabling strong noise attenuation while preserving image details. (c) 2008 Optical Society of America

Fourth-order partial differential equation noise removal on welding images

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Halim, Suhaila Abd; Ibrahim, Arsmah; Sulong, Tuan Nurul Norazura Tuan

2015-10-22

Partial differential equation (PDE) has become one of the important topics in mathematics and is widely used in various fields. It can be used for image denoising in the image analysis field. In this paper, a fourth-order PDE is discussed and implemented as a denoising method on digital images. The fourth-order PDE is solved computationally using finite difference approach and then implemented on a set of digital radiographic images with welding defects. The performance of the discretized model is evaluated using Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR). Simulation is carried out on the discretized model on different level of Gaussianmore » noise in order to get the maximum PSNR value. The convergence criteria chosen to determine the number of iterations required is measured based on the highest PSNR value. Results obtained show that the fourth-order PDE model produced promising results as an image denoising tool compared with median filter.« less

The Research on Denoising of SAR Image Based on Improved K-SVD Algorithm

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tan, Linglong; Li, Changkai; Wang, Yueqin

2018-04-01

SAR images often receive noise interference in the process of acquisition and transmission, which can greatly reduce the quality of images and cause great difficulties for image processing. The existing complete DCT dictionary algorithm is fast in processing speed, but its denoising effect is poor. In this paper, the problem of poor denoising, proposed K-SVD (K-means and singular value decomposition) algorithm is applied to the image noise suppression. Firstly, the sparse dictionary structure is introduced in detail. The dictionary has a compact representation and can effectively train the image signal. Then, the sparse dictionary is trained by K-SVD algorithm according to the sparse representation of the dictionary. The algorithm has more advantages in high dimensional data processing. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can remove the speckle noise more effectively than the complete DCT dictionary and retain the edge details better.

Hyperspectral Image Denoising Using a Nonlocal Spectral Spatial Principal Component Analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, D.; Xu, L.; Peng, J.; Ma, J.

2018-04-01

Hyperspectral images (HSIs) denoising is a critical research area in image processing duo to its importance in improving the quality of HSIs, which has a negative impact on object detection and classification and so on. In this paper, we develop a noise reduction method based on principal component analysis (PCA) for hyperspectral imagery, which is dependent on the assumption that the noise can be removed by selecting the leading principal components. The main contribution of paper is to introduce the spectral spatial structure and nonlocal similarity of the HSIs into the PCA denoising model. PCA with spectral spatial structure can exploit spectral correlation and spatial correlation of HSI by using 3D blocks instead of 2D patches. Nonlocal similarity means the similarity between the referenced pixel and other pixels in nonlocal area, where Mahalanobis distance algorithm is used to estimate the spatial spectral similarity by calculating the distance in 3D blocks. The proposed method is tested on both simulated and real hyperspectral images, the results demonstrate that the proposed method is superior to several other popular methods in HSI denoising.

Sub-band denoising and spline curve fitting method for hemodynamic measurement in perfusion MRI

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lin, Hong-Dun; Huang, Hsiao-Ling; Hsu, Yuan-Yu; Chen, Chi-Chen; Chen, Ing-Yi; Wu, Liang-Chi; Liu, Ren-Shyan; Lin, Kang-Ping

2003-05-01

In clinical research, non-invasive MR perfusion imaging is capable of investigating brain perfusion phenomenon via various hemodynamic measurements, such as cerebral blood volume (CBV), cerebral blood flow (CBF), and mean trasnit time (MTT). These hemodynamic parameters are useful in diagnosing brain disorders such as stroke, infarction and periinfarct ischemia by further semi-quantitative analysis. However, the accuracy of quantitative analysis is usually affected by poor signal-to-noise ratio image quality. In this paper, we propose a hemodynamic measurement method based upon sub-band denoising and spline curve fitting processes to improve image quality for better hemodynamic quantitative analysis results. Ten sets of perfusion MRI data and corresponding PET images were used to validate the performance. For quantitative comparison, we evaluate gray/white matter CBF ratio. As a result, the hemodynamic semi-quantitative analysis result of mean gray to white matter CBF ratio is 2.10 +/- 0.34. The evaluated ratio of brain tissues in perfusion MRI is comparable to PET technique is less than 1-% difference in average. Furthermore, the method features excellent noise reduction and boundary preserving in image processing, and short hemodynamic measurement time.

Joint Denoising/Compression of Image Contours via Shape Prior and Context Tree

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zheng, Amin; Cheung, Gene; Florencio, Dinei

2018-07-01

With the advent of depth sensing technologies, the extraction of object contours in images---a common and important pre-processing step for later higher-level computer vision tasks like object detection and human action recognition---has become easier. However, acquisition noise in captured depth images means that detected contours suffer from unavoidable errors. In this paper, we propose to jointly denoise and compress detected contours in an image for bandwidth-constrained transmission to a client, who can then carry out aforementioned application-specific tasks using the decoded contours as input. We first prove theoretically that in general a joint denoising / compression approach can outperform a separate two-stage approach that first denoises then encodes contours lossily. Adopting a joint approach, we first propose a burst error model that models typical errors encountered in an observed string y of directional edges. We then formulate a rate-constrained maximum a posteriori (MAP) problem that trades off the posterior probability p(x'|y) of an estimated string x' given y with its code rate R(x'). We design a dynamic programming (DP) algorithm that solves the posed problem optimally, and propose a compact context representation called total suffix tree (TST) that can reduce complexity of the algorithm dramatically. Experimental results show that our joint denoising / compression scheme outperformed a competing separate scheme in rate-distortion performance noticeably.

Incorporating HYPR de-noising within iterative PET reconstruction (HYPR-OSEM)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

(Kevin Cheng, Ju-Chieh; Matthews, Julian; Sossi, Vesna; Anton-Rodriguez, Jose; Salomon, André; Boellaard, Ronald

2017-08-01

HighlY constrained back-PRojection (HYPR) is a post-processing de-noising technique originally developed for time-resolved magnetic resonance imaging. It has been recently applied to dynamic imaging for positron emission tomography and shown promising results. In this work, we have developed an iterative reconstruction algorithm (HYPR-OSEM) which improves the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in static imaging (i.e. single frame reconstruction) by incorporating HYPR de-noising directly within the ordered subsets expectation maximization (OSEM) algorithm. The proposed HYPR operator in this work operates on the target image(s) from each subset of OSEM and uses the sum of the preceding subset images as the composite which is updated every iteration. Three strategies were used to apply the HYPR operator in OSEM: (i) within the image space modeling component of the system matrix in forward-projection only, (ii) within the image space modeling component in both forward-projection and back-projection, and (iii) on the image estimate after the OSEM update for each subset thus generating three forms: (i) HYPR-F-OSEM, (ii) HYPR-FB-OSEM, and (iii) HYPR-AU-OSEM. Resolution and contrast phantom simulations with various sizes of hot and cold regions as well as experimental phantom and patient data were used to evaluate the performance of the three forms of HYPR-OSEM, and the results were compared to OSEM with and without a post reconstruction filter. It was observed that the convergence in contrast recovery coefficients (CRC) obtained from all forms of HYPR-OSEM was slower than that obtained from OSEM. Nevertheless, HYPR-OSEM improved SNR without degrading accuracy in terms of resolution and contrast. It achieved better accuracy in CRC at equivalent noise level and better precision than OSEM and better accuracy than filtered OSEM in general. In addition, HYPR-AU-OSEM has been determined to be the more effective form of HYPR-OSEM in terms of accuracy and precision based on the studies conducted in this work.

A diffusion-matched principal component analysis (DM-PCA) based two-channel denoising procedure for high-resolution diffusion-weighted MRI

PubMed Central

Chang, Hing-Chiu; Bilgin, Ali; Bernstein, Adam; Trouard, Theodore P.

2018-01-01

Over the past several years, significant efforts have been made to improve the spatial resolution of diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), aiming at better detecting subtle lesions and more reliably resolving white-matter fiber tracts. A major concern with high-resolution DWI is the limited signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), which may significantly offset the advantages of high spatial resolution. Although the SNR of DWI data can be improved by denoising in post-processing, existing denoising procedures may potentially reduce the anatomic resolvability of high-resolution imaging data. Additionally, non-Gaussian noise induced signal bias in low-SNR DWI data may not always be corrected with existing denoising approaches. Here we report an improved denoising procedure, termed diffusion-matched principal component analysis (DM-PCA), which comprises 1) identifying a group of (not necessarily neighboring) voxels that demonstrate very similar magnitude signal variation patterns along the diffusion dimension, 2) correcting low-frequency phase variations in complex-valued DWI data, 3) performing PCA along the diffusion dimension for real- and imaginary-components (in two separate channels) of phase-corrected DWI voxels with matched diffusion properties, 4) suppressing the noisy PCA components in real- and imaginary-components, separately, of phase-corrected DWI data, and 5) combining real- and imaginary-components of denoised DWI data. Our data show that the new two-channel (i.e., for real- and imaginary-components) DM-PCA denoising procedure performs reliably without noticeably compromising anatomic resolvability. Non-Gaussian noise induced signal bias could also be reduced with the new denoising method. The DM-PCA based denoising procedure should prove highly valuable for high-resolution DWI studies in research and clinical uses. PMID:29694400

Denoising of gravitational wave signals via dictionary learning algorithms

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Torres-Forné, Alejandro; Marquina, Antonio; Font, José A.; Ibáñez, José M.

2016-12-01

Gravitational wave astronomy has become a reality after the historical detections accomplished during the first observing run of the two advanced LIGO detectors. In the following years, the number of detections is expected to increase significantly with the full commissioning of the advanced LIGO, advanced Virgo and KAGRA detectors. The development of sophisticated data analysis techniques to improve the opportunities of detection for low signal-to-noise-ratio events is, hence, a most crucial effort. In this paper, we present one such technique, dictionary-learning algorithms, which have been extensively developed in the last few years and successfully applied mostly in the context of image processing. However, to the best of our knowledge, such algorithms have not yet been employed to denoise gravitational wave signals. By building dictionaries from numerical relativity templates of both binary black holes mergers and bursts of rotational core collapse, we show how machine-learning algorithms based on dictionaries can also be successfully applied for gravitational wave denoising. We use a subset of signals from both catalogs, embedded in nonwhite Gaussian noise, to assess our techniques with a large sample of tests and to find the best model parameters. The application of our method to the actual signal GW150914 shows promising results. Dictionary-learning algorithms could be a complementary addition to the gravitational wave data analysis toolkit. They may be used to extract signals from noise and to infer physical parameters if the data are in good enough agreement with the morphology of the dictionary atoms.

Multiresolution generalized N dimension PCA for ultrasound image denoising

PubMed Central

2014-01-01

Background Ultrasound images are usually affected by speckle noise, which is a type of random multiplicative noise. Thus, reducing speckle and improving image visual quality are vital to obtaining better diagnosis. Method In this paper, a novel noise reduction method for medical ultrasound images, called multiresolution generalized N dimension PCA (MR-GND-PCA), is presented. In this method, the Gaussian pyramid and multiscale image stacks on each level are built first. GND-PCA as a multilinear subspace learning method is used for denoising. Each level is combined to achieve the final denoised image based on Laplacian pyramids. Results The proposed method is tested with synthetically speckled and real ultrasound images, and quality evaluation metrics, including MSE, SNR and PSNR, are used to evaluate its performance. Conclusion Experimental results show that the proposed method achieved the lowest noise interference and improved image quality by reducing noise and preserving the structure. Our method is also robust for the image with a much higher level of speckle noise. For clinical images, the results show that MR-GND-PCA can reduce speckle and preserve resolvable details. PMID:25096917

A hybrid spatial-spectral denoising method for infrared hyperspectral images using 2DPCA

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Huang, Jun; Ma, Yong; Mei, Xiaoguang; Fan, Fan

2016-11-01

The traditional noise reduction methods for 3-D infrared hyperspectral images typically operate independently in either the spatial or spectral domain, and such methods overlook the relationship between the two domains. To address this issue, we propose a hybrid spatial-spectral method in this paper to link both domains. First, principal component analysis and bivariate wavelet shrinkage are performed in the 2-D spatial domain. Second, 2-D principal component analysis transformation is conducted in the 1-D spectral domain to separate the basic components from detail ones. The energy distribution of noise is unaffected by orthogonal transformation; therefore, the signal-to-noise ratio of each component is used as a criterion to determine whether a component should be protected from over-denoising or denoised with certain 1-D denoising methods. This study implements the 1-D wavelet shrinking threshold method based on Stein's unbiased risk estimator, and the quantitative results on publicly available datasets demonstrate that our method can improve denoising performance more effectively than other state-of-the-art methods can.

An efficient dictionary learning algorithm and its application to 3-D medical image denoising.

PubMed

Li, Shutao; Fang, Leyuan; Yin, Haitao

2012-02-01

In this paper, we propose an efficient dictionary learning algorithm for sparse representation of given data and suggest a way to apply this algorithm to 3-D medical image denoising. Our learning approach is composed of two main parts: sparse coding and dictionary updating. On the sparse coding stage, an efficient algorithm named multiple clusters pursuit (MCP) is proposed. The MCP first applies a dictionary structuring strategy to cluster the atoms with high coherence together, and then employs a multiple-selection strategy to select several competitive atoms at each iteration. These two strategies can greatly reduce the computation complexity of the MCP and assist it to obtain better sparse solution. On the dictionary updating stage, the alternating optimization that efficiently approximates the singular value decomposition is introduced. Furthermore, in the 3-D medical image denoising application, a joint 3-D operation is proposed for taking the learning capabilities of the presented algorithm to simultaneously capture the correlations within each slice and correlations across the nearby slices, thereby obtaining better denoising results. The experiments on both synthetically generated data and real 3-D medical images demonstrate that the proposed approach has superior performance compared to some well-known methods. © 2011 IEEE

MULTISCALE TENSOR ANISOTROPIC FILTERING OF FLUORESCENCE MICROSCOPY FOR DENOISING MICROVASCULATURE.

PubMed

Prasath, V B S; Pelapur, R; Glinskii, O V; Glinsky, V V; Huxley, V H; Palaniappan, K

2015-04-01

Fluorescence microscopy images are contaminated by noise and improving image quality without blurring vascular structures by filtering is an important step in automatic image analysis. The application of interest here is to automatically extract the structural components of the microvascular system with accuracy from images acquired by fluorescence microscopy. A robust denoising process is necessary in order to extract accurate vascular morphology information. For this purpose, we propose a multiscale tensor with anisotropic diffusion model which progressively and adaptively updates the amount of smoothing while preserving vessel boundaries accurately. Based on a coherency enhancing flow with planar confidence measure and fused 3D structure information, our method integrates multiple scales for microvasculature preservation and noise removal membrane structures. Experimental results on simulated synthetic images and epifluorescence images show the advantage of our improvement over other related diffusion filters. We further show that the proposed multiscale integration approach improves denoising accuracy of different tensor diffusion methods to obtain better microvasculature segmentation.

Total Variation Denoising and Support Localization of the Gradient

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chambolle, A.; Duval, V.; Peyré, G.; Poon, C.

2016-10-01

This paper describes the geometrical properties of the solutions to the total variation denoising method. A folklore statement is that this method is able to restore sharp edges, but at the same time, might introduce some staircasing (i.e. “fake” edges) in flat areas. Quite surprisingly, put aside numerical evidences, almost no theoretical result are available to backup these claims. The first contribution of this paper is a precise mathematical definition of the “extended support” (associated to the noise-free image) of TV denoising. This is intuitively the region which is unstable and will suffer from the staircasing effect. Our main result shows that the TV denoising method indeed restores a piece-wise constant image outside a small tube surrounding the extended support. Furthermore, the radius of this tube shrinks toward zero as the noise level vanishes and in some cases, an upper bound on the convergence rate is given.

Error-proofing test system of industrial components based on image processing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Huang, Ying; Huang, Tao

2018-05-01

Due to the improvement of modern industrial level and accuracy, conventional manual test fails to satisfy the test standards of enterprises, so digital image processing technique should be utilized to gather and analyze the information on the surface of industrial components, so as to achieve the purpose of test. To test the installation parts of automotive engine, this paper employs camera to capture the images of the components. After these images are preprocessed including denoising, the image processing algorithm relying on flood fill algorithm is used to test the installation of the components. The results prove that this system has very high test accuracy.

Resolution enhancement of wide-field interferometric microscopy by coupled deep autoencoders.

PubMed

Işil, Çağatay; Yorulmaz, Mustafa; Solmaz, Berkan; Turhan, Adil Burak; Yurdakul, Celalettin; Ünlü, Selim; Ozbay, Ekmel; Koç, Aykut

2018-04-01

Wide-field interferometric microscopy is a highly sensitive, label-free, and low-cost biosensing imaging technique capable of visualizing individual biological nanoparticles such as viral pathogens and exosomes. However, further resolution enhancement is necessary to increase detection and classification accuracy of subdiffraction-limited nanoparticles. In this study, we propose a deep-learning approach, based on coupled deep autoencoders, to improve resolution of images of L-shaped nanostructures. During training, our method utilizes microscope image patches and their corresponding manual truth image patches in order to learn the transformation between them. Following training, the designed network reconstructs denoised and resolution-enhanced image patches for unseen input.

Denoised and texture enhanced MVCT to improve soft tissue conspicuity

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Sheng, Ke, E-mail: ksheng@mednet.ucla.edu; Qi, Sharon X.; Gou, Shuiping

Purpose: MVCT images have been used in TomoTherapy treatment to align patients based on bony anatomies but its usefulness for soft tissue registration, delineation, and adaptive radiation therapy is limited due to insignificant photoelectric interaction components and the presence of noise resulting from low detector quantum efficiency of megavoltage x-rays. Algebraic reconstruction with sparsity regularizers as well as local denoising methods has not significantly improved the soft tissue conspicuity. The authors aim to utilize a nonlocal means denoising method and texture enhancement to recover the soft tissue information in MVCT (DeTECT). Methods: A block matching 3D (BM3D) algorithm was adaptedmore » to reduce the noise while keeping the texture information of the MVCT images. Following imaging denoising, a saliency map was created to further enhance visual conspicuity of low contrast structures. In this study, BM3D and saliency maps were applied to MVCT images of a CT imaging quality phantom, a head and neck, and four prostate patients. Following these steps, the contrast-to-noise ratios (CNRs) were quantified. Results: By applying BM3D denoising and saliency map, postprocessed MVCT images show remarkable improvements in imaging contrast without compromising resolution. For the head and neck patient, the difficult-to-see lymph nodes and vein in the carotid space in the original MVCT image became conspicuous in DeTECT. For the prostate patients, the ambiguous boundary between the bladder and the prostate in the original MVCT was clarified. The CNRs of phantom low contrast inserts were improved from 1.48 and 3.8 to 13.67 and 16.17, respectively. The CNRs of two regions-of-interest were improved from 1.5 and 3.17 to 3.14 and 15.76, respectively, for the head and neck patient. DeTECT also increased the CNR of prostate from 0.13 to 1.46 for the four prostate patients. The results are substantially better than a local denoising method using anisotropic diffusion. Conclusions: The authors showed that it is feasible to extract more soft tissue contrast information from the noisy MVCT images using a nonlocal means 3D block matching method in combination with saliency maps, revealing information that was originally unperceivable to human observers.« less

Fractional-order TV-L2 model for image denoising

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Dali; Sun, Shenshen; Zhang, Congrong; Chen, YangQuan; Xue, Dingyu

2013-10-01

This paper proposes a new fractional order total variation (TV) denoising method, which provides a much more elegant and effective way of treating problems of the algorithm implementation, ill-posed inverse, regularization parameter selection and blocky effect. Two fractional order TV-L2 models are constructed for image denoising. The majorization-minimization (MM) algorithm is used to decompose these two complex fractional TV optimization problems into a set of linear optimization problems which can be solved by the conjugate gradient algorithm. The final adaptive numerical procedure is given. Finally, we report experimental results which show that the proposed methodology avoids the blocky effect and achieves state-of-the-art performance. In addition, two medical image processing experiments are presented to demonstrate the validity of the proposed methodology.

A sequential solution for anisotropic total variation image denoising with interval constraints

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xu, Jingyan; Noo, Frédéric

2017-09-01

We show that two problems involving the anisotropic total variation (TV) and interval constraints on the unknown variables admit, under some conditions, a simple sequential solution. Problem 1 is a constrained TV penalized image denoising problem; problem 2 is a constrained fused lasso signal approximator. The sequential solution entails finding first the solution to the unconstrained problem, and then applying a thresholding to satisfy the constraints. If the interval constraints are uniform, this sequential solution solves problem 1. If the interval constraints furthermore contain zero, the sequential solution solves problem 2. Here uniform interval constraints refer to all unknowns being constrained to the same interval. A typical example of application is image denoising in x-ray CT, where the image intensities are non-negative as they physically represent linear attenuation coefficient in the patient body. Our results are simple yet seem unknown; we establish them using the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions for constrained convex optimization.

Global Binary Optimization on Graphs for Classification of High Dimensional Data

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-09-01

Buades et al . in [10] introduce a new non-local means algorithm for image denoising and compare it to some of the best methods. In [28], Grady de...scribes a random walk algorithm for image seg- mentation using the solution to a Dirichlet prob- lem. Elmoataz et al . present generalizations of the...graph Laplacian [19] for image denoising and man- ifold smoothing. Couprie et al . in [16] propose a parameterized graph-based energy function that unifies

J-substitution algorithm in magnetic resonance electrical impedance tomography (MREIT): phantom experiments for static resistivity images.

PubMed

Khang, Hyun Soo; Lee, Byung Il; Oh, Suk Hoon; Woo, Eung Je; Lee, Soo Yeol; Cho, Min Hyoung; Kwon, Ohin; Yoon, Jeong Rock; Seo, Jin Keun

2002-06-01

Recently, a new static resistivity image reconstruction algorithm is proposed utilizing internal current density data obtained by magnetic resonance current density imaging technique. This new imaging method is called magnetic resonance electrical impedance tomography (MREIT). The derivation and performance of J-substitution algorithm in MREIT have been reported as a new accurate and high-resolution static impedance imaging technique via computer simulation methods. In this paper, we present experimental procedures, denoising techniques, and image reconstructions using a 0.3-tesla (T) experimental MREIT system and saline phantoms. MREIT using J-substitution algorithm effectively utilizes the internal current density information resolving the problem inherent in a conventional EIT, that is, the low sensitivity of boundary measurements to any changes of internal tissue resistivity values. Resistivity images of saline phantoms show an accuracy of 6.8%-47.2% and spatial resolution of 64 x 64. Both of them can be significantly improved by using an MRI system with a better signal-to-noise ratio.

Comparison of automatic denoising methods for phonocardiograms with extraction of signal parameters via the Hilbert Transform

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Messer, Sheila R.; Agzarian, John; Abbott, Derek

2001-05-01

Phonocardiograms (PCGs) have many advantages over traditional auscultation (listening to the heart) because they may be replayed, may be analyzed for spectral and frequency content, and frequencies inaudible to the human ear may be recorded. However, various sources of noise may pollute a PCG including lung sounds, environmental noise and noise generated from contact between the recording device and the skin. Because PCG signals are known to be nonlinear and it is often not possible to determine their noise content, traditional de-noising methods may not be effectively applied. However, other methods including wavelet de-noising, wavelet packet de-noising and averaging can be employed to de-noise the PCG. This study examines and compares these de-noising methods. This study answers such questions as to which de-noising method gives a better SNR, the magnitude of signal information that is lost as a result of the de-noising process, the appropriate uses of the different methods down to such specifics as to which wavelets and decomposition levels give best results in wavelet and wavelet packet de-noising. In general, the wavelet and wavelet packet de-noising performed roughly equally with optimal de-noising occurring at 3-5 levels of decomposition. Averaging also proved a highly useful de- noising technique; however, in some cases averaging is not appropriate. The Hilbert Transform is used to illustrate the results of the de-noising process and to extract instantaneous features including instantaneous amplitude, frequency, and phase.

The use of wavelet filters for reducing noise in posterior fossa Computed Tomography images

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Pita-Machado, Reinado; Perez-Diaz, Marlen, E-mail: mperez@uclv.edu.cu; Lorenzo-Ginori, Juan V., E-mail: mperez@uclv.edu.cu

Wavelet transform based de-noising like wavelet shrinkage, gives the good results in CT. This procedure affects very little the spatial resolution. Some applications are reconstruction methods, while others are a posteriori de-noising methods. De-noising after reconstruction is very difficult because the noise is non-stationary and has unknown distribution. Therefore, methods which work on the sinogram-space don’t have this problem, because they always work over a known noise distribution at this point. On the other hand, the posterior fossa in a head CT is a very complex region for physicians, because it is commonly affected by artifacts and noise which aremore » not eliminated during the reconstruction procedure. This can leads to some false positive evaluations. The purpose of our present work is to compare different wavelet shrinkage de-noising filters to reduce noise, particularly in images of the posterior fossa within CT scans in the sinogram-space. This work describes an experimental search for the best wavelets, to reduce Poisson noise in Computed Tomography (CT) scans. Results showed that de-noising with wavelet filters improved the quality of posterior fossa region in terms of an increased CNR, without noticeable structural distortions.« less

Restored low-dose digital breast tomosynthesis: a perception study

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Borges, Lucas R.; Bakic, Predrag R.; Maidment, Andrew D. A.; Vieira, Marcelo A. C.

2018-03-01

This work investigates the perception of noise from restored low-dose digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) images. First, low-dose DBT projections were generated using a dose reduction simulation algorithm. A dataset of clinical images from the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania was used for this purpose. Low-dose projections were then denoised with a denoising pipeline developed specifically for DBT images. Denoised and noisy projections were combined to generate images with signal-to-noise ratio comparable to the full-dose images. The quality of restored low-dose and full-dose projections were first compared in terms of an objective no-reference image quality metric previously validated for mammography. In the second analysis, regions of interest (ROIs) were selected from reconstructed full-dose and restored low-dose slices, and were displayed side-by-side on a high-resolution medical display. Five medical physics specialists were asked to choose the image containing less noise and less blur using a 2-AFC experiment. The objective metric shows that, after the proposed image restoration framework was applied, images with as little as 60% of the AEC dose yielded similar quality indices when compared to images acquired with the full-dose. In the 2-AFC experiments results showed that when the denoising framework was used, 30% reduction in dose was possible without any perceived difference in noise or blur. Note that this study evaluated the observers perception to noise and blur and does not claim that the dose of DBT examinations can be reduced with no harm to the detection of cancer. Future work is necessary to make any claims regarding detection, localization and characterization of lesions.

Signal-Noise Identification of Magnetotelluric Signals Using Fractal-Entropy and Clustering Algorithm for Targeted De-Noising

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Jin; Zhang, Xian; Gong, Jinzhe; Tang, Jingtian; Ren, Zhengyong; Li, Guang; Deng, Yanli; Cai, Jin

A new technique is proposed for signal-noise identification and targeted de-noising of Magnetotelluric (MT) signals. This method is based on fractal-entropy and clustering algorithm, which automatically identifies signal sections corrupted by common interference (square, triangle and pulse waves), enabling targeted de-noising and preventing the loss of useful information in filtering. To implement the technique, four characteristic parameters — fractal box dimension (FBD), higuchi fractal dimension (HFD), fuzzy entropy (FuEn) and approximate entropy (ApEn) — are extracted from MT time-series. The fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering technique is used to analyze the characteristic parameters and automatically distinguish signals with strong interference from the rest. The wavelet threshold (WT) de-noising method is used only to suppress the identified strong interference in selected signal sections. The technique is validated through signal samples with known interference, before being applied to a set of field measured MT/Audio Magnetotelluric (AMT) data. Compared with the conventional de-noising strategy that blindly applies the filter to the overall dataset, the proposed method can automatically identify and purposefully suppress the intermittent interference in the MT/AMT signal. The resulted apparent resistivity-phase curve is more continuous and smooth, and the slow-change trend in the low-frequency range is more precisely reserved. Moreover, the characteristic of the target-filtered MT/AMT signal is close to the essential characteristic of the natural field, and the result more accurately reflects the inherent electrical structure information of the measured site.

3D image restoration for confocal microscopy: toward a wavelet deconvolution for the study of complex biological structures

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Boutet de Monvel, Jacques; Le Calvez, Sophie; Ulfendahl, Mats

2000-05-01

Image restoration algorithms provide efficient tools for recovering part of the information lost in the imaging process of a microscope. We describe recent progress in the application of deconvolution to confocal microscopy. The point spread function of a Biorad-MRC1024 confocal microscope was measured under various imaging conditions, and used to process 3D-confocal images acquired in an intact preparation of the inner ear developed at Karolinska Institutet. Using these experiments we investigate the application of denoising methods based on wavelet analysis as a natural regularization of the deconvolution process. Within the Bayesian approach to image restoration, we compare wavelet denoising with the use of a maximum entropy constraint as another natural regularization method. Numerical experiments performed with test images show a clear advantage of the wavelet denoising approach, allowing to `cool down' the image with respect to the signal, while suppressing much of the fine-scale artifacts appearing during deconvolution due to the presence of noise, incomplete knowledge of the point spread function, or undersampling problems. We further describe a natural development of this approach, which consists of performing the Bayesian inference directly in the wavelet domain.

Noise reduction in Lidar signal using correlation-based EMD combined with soft thresholding and roughness penalty

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chang, Jianhua; Zhu, Lingyan; Li, Hongxu; Xu, Fan; Liu, Binggang; Yang, Zhenbo

2018-01-01

Empirical mode decomposition (EMD) is widely used to analyze the non-linear and non-stationary signals for noise reduction. In this study, a novel EMD-based denoising method, referred to as EMD with soft thresholding and roughness penalty (EMD-STRP), is proposed for the Lidar signal denoising. With the proposed method, the relevant and irrelevant intrinsic mode functions are first distinguished via a correlation coefficient. Then, the soft thresholding technique is applied to the irrelevant modes, and the roughness penalty technique is applied to the relevant modes to extract as much information as possible. The effectiveness of the proposed method was evaluated using three typical signals contaminated by white Gaussian noise. The denoising performance was then compared to the denoising capabilities of other techniques, such as correlation-based EMD partial reconstruction, correlation-based EMD hard thresholding, and wavelet transform. The use of EMD-STRP on the measured Lidar signal resulted in the noise being efficiently suppressed, with an improved signal to noise ratio of 22.25 dB and an extended detection range of 11 km.

Efficient operator splitting algorithm for joint sparsity-regularized SPIRiT-based parallel MR imaging reconstruction.

PubMed

Duan, Jizhong; Liu, Yu; Jing, Peiguang

2018-02-01

Self-consistent parallel imaging (SPIRiT) is an auto-calibrating model for the reconstruction of parallel magnetic resonance imaging, which can be formulated as a regularized SPIRiT problem. The Projection Over Convex Sets (POCS) method was used to solve the formulated regularized SPIRiT problem. However, the quality of the reconstructed image still needs to be improved. Though methods such as NonLinear Conjugate Gradients (NLCG) can achieve higher spatial resolution, these methods always demand very complex computation and converge slowly. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm to solve the formulated Cartesian SPIRiT problem with the JTV and JL1 regularization terms. The proposed algorithm uses the operator splitting (OS) technique to decompose the problem into a gradient problem and a denoising problem with two regularization terms, which is solved by our proposed split Bregman based denoising algorithm, and adopts the Barzilai and Borwein method to update step size. Simulation experiments on two in vivo data sets demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is 1.3 times faster than ADMM for datasets with 8 channels. Especially, our proposal is 2 times faster than ADMM for the dataset with 32 channels. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Sparsity-based Poisson denoising with dictionary learning.

PubMed

Giryes, Raja; Elad, Michael

2014-12-01

The problem of Poisson denoising appears in various imaging applications, such as low-light photography, medical imaging, and microscopy. In cases of high SNR, several transformations exist so as to convert the Poisson noise into an additive-independent identically distributed. Gaussian noise, for which many effective algorithms are available. However, in a low-SNR regime, these transformations are significantly less accurate, and a strategy that relies directly on the true noise statistics is required. Salmon et al took this route, proposing a patch-based exponential image representation model based on Gaussian mixture model, leading to state-of-the-art results. In this paper, we propose to harness sparse-representation modeling to the image patches, adopting the same exponential idea. Our scheme uses a greedy pursuit with boot-strapping-based stopping condition and dictionary learning within the denoising process. The reconstruction performance of the proposed scheme is competitive with leading methods in high SNR and achieving state-of-the-art results in cases of low SNR.

Implementation and performance evaluation of acoustic denoising algorithms for UAV

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chowdhury, Ahmed Sony Kamal

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have become popular alternative for wildlife monitoring and border surveillance applications. Elimination of the UAV's background noise and classifying the target audio signal effectively are still a major challenge. The main goal of this thesis is to remove UAV's background noise by means of acoustic denoising techniques. Existing denoising algorithms, such as Adaptive Least Mean Square (LMS), Wavelet Denoising, Time-Frequency Block Thresholding, and Wiener Filter, were implemented and their performance evaluated. The denoising algorithms were evaluated for average Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), Segmental SNR (SSNR), Log Likelihood Ratio (LLR), and Log Spectral Distance (LSD) metrics. To evaluate the effectiveness of the denoising algorithms on classification of target audio, we implemented Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Naive Bayes classification algorithms. Simulation results demonstrate that LMS and Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) denoising algorithm offered superior performance than other algorithms. Finally, we implemented the LMS and DWT algorithms on a DSP board for hardware evaluation. Experimental results showed that LMS algorithm's performance is robust compared to DWT for various noise types to classify target audio signals.

Heuristic Enhancement of Magneto-Optical Images for NDE

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cacciola, Matteo; Megali, Giuseppe; Pellicanò, Diego; Calcagno, Salvatore; Versaci, Mario; Morabito, FrancescoCarlo

2010-12-01

The quality of measurements in nondestructive testing and evaluation plays a key role in assessing the reliability of different inspection techniques. Each different technique, like the magneto-optic imaging here treated, is affected by some special types of noise which are related to the specific device used for their acquisition. Therefore, the design of even more accurate image processing is often required by relevant applications, for instance, in implementing integrated solutions for flaw detection and characterization. The aim of this paper is to propose a preprocessing procedure based on independent component analysis (ICA) to ease the detection of rivets and/or flaws in the specimens under test. A comparison of the proposed approach with some other advanced image processing methodologies used for denoising magneto-optic images (MOIs) is carried out, in order to show advantages and weakness of ICA in improving the accuracy and performance of the rivets/flaw detection.

Color Image Restoration Using Nonlocal Mumford-Shah Regularizers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jung, Miyoun; Bresson, Xavier; Chan, Tony F.; Vese, Luminita A.

We introduce several color image restoration algorithms based on the Mumford-Shah model and nonlocal image information. The standard Ambrosio-Tortorelli and Shah models are defined to work in a small local neighborhood, which are sufficient to denoise smooth regions with sharp boundaries. However, textures are not local in nature and require semi-local/non-local information to be denoised efficiently. Inspired from recent work (NL-means of Buades, Coll, Morel and NL-TV of Gilboa, Osher), we extend the standard models of Ambrosio-Tortorelli and Shah approximations to Mumford-Shah functionals to work with nonlocal information, for better restoration of fine structures and textures. We present several applications of the proposed nonlocal MS regularizers in image processing such as color image denoising, color image deblurring in the presence of Gaussian or impulse noise, color image inpainting, and color image super-resolution. In the formulation of nonlocal variational models for the image deblurring with impulse noise, we propose an efficient preprocessing step for the computation of the weight function w. In all the applications, the proposed nonlocal regularizers produce superior results over the local ones, especially in image inpainting with large missing regions. Experimental results and comparisons between the proposed nonlocal methods and the local ones are shown.

Ladar range image denoising by a nonlocal probability statistics algorithm

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xia, Zhi-Wei; Li, Qi; Xiong, Zhi-Peng; Wang, Qi

2013-01-01

According to the characteristic of range images of coherent ladar and the basis of nonlocal means (NLM), a nonlocal probability statistics (NLPS) algorithm is proposed in this paper. The difference is that NLM performs denoising using the mean of the conditional probability distribution function (PDF) while NLPS using the maximum of the marginal PDF. In the algorithm, similar blocks are found out by the operation of block matching and form a group. Pixels in the group are analyzed by probability statistics and the gray value with maximum probability is used as the estimated value of the current pixel. The simulated range images of coherent ladar with different carrier-to-noise ratio and real range image of coherent ladar with 8 gray-scales are denoised by this algorithm, and the results are compared with those of median filter, multitemplate order mean filter, NLM, median nonlocal mean filter and its incorporation of anatomical side information, and unsupervised information-theoretic adaptive filter. The range abnormality noise and Gaussian noise in range image of coherent ladar are effectively suppressed by NLPS.

Multiplicative noise removal via a learned dictionary.

PubMed

Huang, Yu-Mei; Moisan, Lionel; Ng, Michael K; Zeng, Tieyong

2012-11-01

Multiplicative noise removal is a challenging image processing problem, and most existing methods are based on the maximum a posteriori formulation and the logarithmic transformation of multiplicative denoising problems into additive denoising problems. Sparse representations of images have shown to be efficient approaches for image recovery. Following this idea, in this paper, we propose to learn a dictionary from the logarithmic transformed image, and then to use it in a variational model built for noise removal. Extensive experimental results suggest that in terms of visual quality, peak signal-to-noise ratio, and mean absolute deviation error, the proposed algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art methods.

Bilateral filtering using the full noise covariance matrix applied to x-ray phase-contrast computed tomography.

PubMed

Allner, S; Koehler, T; Fehringer, A; Birnbacher, L; Willner, M; Pfeiffer, F; Noël, P B

2016-05-21

The purpose of this work is to develop an image-based de-noising algorithm that exploits complementary information and noise statistics from multi-modal images, as they emerge in x-ray tomography techniques, for instance grating-based phase-contrast CT and spectral CT. Among the noise reduction methods, image-based de-noising is one popular approach and the so-called bilateral filter is a well known algorithm for edge-preserving filtering. We developed a generalization of the bilateral filter for the case where the imaging system provides two or more perfectly aligned images. The proposed generalization is statistically motivated and takes the full second order noise statistics of these images into account. In particular, it includes a noise correlation between the images and spatial noise correlation within the same image. The novel generalized three-dimensional bilateral filter is applied to the attenuation and phase images created with filtered backprojection reconstructions from grating-based phase-contrast tomography. In comparison to established bilateral filters, we obtain improved noise reduction and at the same time a better preservation of edges in the images on the examples of a simulated soft-tissue phantom, a human cerebellum and a human artery sample. The applied full noise covariance is determined via cross-correlation of the image noise. The filter results yield an improved feature recovery based on enhanced noise suppression and edge preservation as shown here on the example of attenuation and phase images captured with grating-based phase-contrast computed tomography. This is supported by quantitative image analysis. Without being bound to phase-contrast imaging, this generalized filter is applicable to any kind of noise-afflicted image data with or without noise correlation. Therefore, it can be utilized in various imaging applications and fields.

Image denoising via fundamental anisotropic diffusion and wavelet shrinkage: a comparative study

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bayraktar, Bulent; Analoui, Mostafa

2004-05-01

Noise removal faces a challenge: Keeping the image details. Resolving the dilemma of two purposes (smoothing and keeping image features in tact) working inadvertently of each other was an almost impossible task until anisotropic dif-fusion (AD) was formally introduced by Perona and Malik (PM). AD favors intra-region smoothing over inter-region in piecewise smooth images. Many authors regularized the original PM algorithm to overcome its drawbacks. We compared the performance of denoising using such 'fundamental' AD algorithms and one of the most powerful multiresolution tools available today, namely, wavelet shrinkage. The AD algorithms here are called 'fundamental' in the sense that the regularized versions center around the original PM algorithm with minor changes to the logic. The algorithms are tested with different noise types and levels. On top of the visual inspection, two mathematical metrics are used for performance comparison: Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and universal image quality index (UIQI). We conclude that some of the regu-larized versions of PM algorithm (AD) perform comparably with wavelet shrinkage denoising. This saves a lot of compu-tational power. With this conclusion, we applied the better-performing fundamental AD algorithms to a new imaging modality: Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT).

GASPACHO: a generic automatic solver using proximal algorithms for convex huge optimization problems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Goossens, Bart; Luong, Hiêp; Philips, Wilfried

2017-08-01

Many inverse problems (e.g., demosaicking, deblurring, denoising, image fusion, HDR synthesis) share various similarities: degradation operators are often modeled by a specific data fitting function while image prior knowledge (e.g., sparsity) is incorporated by additional regularization terms. In this paper, we investigate automatic algorithmic techniques for evaluating proximal operators. These algorithmic techniques also enable efficient calculation of adjoints from linear operators in a general matrix-free setting. In particular, we study the simultaneous-direction method of multipliers (SDMM) and the parallel proximal algorithm (PPXA) solvers and show that the automatically derived implementations are well suited for both single-GPU and multi-GPU processing. We demonstrate this approach for an Electron Microscopy (EM) deconvolution problem.

Preprocessing with image denoising and histogram equalization for endoscopy image analysis using texture analysis.

PubMed

Hiroyasu, Tomoyuki; Hayashinuma, Katsutoshi; Ichikawa, Hiroshi; Yagi, Nobuaki

2015-08-01

A preprocessing method for endoscopy image analysis using texture analysis is proposed. In a previous study, we proposed a feature value that combines a co-occurrence matrix and a run-length matrix to analyze the extent of early gastric cancer from images taken with narrow-band imaging endoscopy. However, the obtained feature value does not identify lesion zones correctly due to the influence of noise and halation. Therefore, we propose a new preprocessing method with a non-local means filter for de-noising and contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization. We have confirmed that the pattern of gastric mucosa in images can be improved by the proposed method. Furthermore, the lesion zone is shown more correctly by the obtained color map.

On detection of median filtering in digital images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kirchner, Matthias; Fridrich, Jessica

2010-01-01

In digital image forensics, it is generally accepted that intentional manipulations of the image content are most critical and hence numerous forensic methods focus on the detection of such 'malicious' post-processing. However, it is also beneficial to know as much as possible about the general processing history of an image, including content-preserving operations, since they can affect the reliability of forensic methods in various ways. In this paper, we present a simple yet effective technique to detect median filtering in digital images-a widely used denoising and smoothing operator. As a great variety of forensic methods relies on some kind of a linearity assumption, a detection of non-linear median filtering is of particular interest. The effectiveness of our method is backed with experimental evidence on a large image database.

Spectrum image analysis tool - A flexible MATLAB solution to analyze EEL and CL spectrum images.

PubMed

Schmidt, Franz-Philipp; Hofer, Ferdinand; Krenn, Joachim R

2017-02-01

Spectrum imaging techniques, gaining simultaneously structural (image) and spectroscopic data, require appropriate and careful processing to extract information of the dataset. In this article we introduce a MATLAB based software that uses three dimensional data (EEL/CL spectrum image in dm3 format (Gatan Inc.'s DigitalMicrograph ® )) as input. A graphical user interface enables a fast and easy mapping of spectral dependent images and position dependent spectra. First, data processing such as background subtraction, deconvolution and denoising, second, multiple display options including an EEL/CL moviemaker and, third, the applicability on a large amount of data sets with a small work load makes this program an interesting tool to visualize otherwise hidden details. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Computer aided detection system for lung cancer using computer tomography scans

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mahesh, Shanthi; Rakesh, Spoorthi; Patil, Vidya C.

2018-04-01

Lung Cancer is a disease can be defined as uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. If we detect the Lung Cancer in its early stage, then that could be the key of its cure. In this work the non-invasive methods are studied for assisting in nodule detection. It supplies a Computer Aided Diagnosis System (CAD) for early detection of lung cancer nodules from the Computer Tomography (CT) images. CAD system is the one which helps to improve the diagnostic performance of radiologists in their image interpretations. The main aim of this technique is to develop a CAD system for finding the lung cancer using the lung CT images and classify the nodule as Benign or Malignant. For classifying cancer cells, SVM classifier is used. Here, image processing techniques have been used to de-noise, to enhance, for segmentation and edge detection of an image is used to extract the area, perimeter and shape of nodule. The core factors of this research are Image quality and accuracy.

Patch-based anisotropic diffusion scheme for fluorescence diffuse optical tomography--part 2: image reconstruction.

PubMed

Correia, Teresa; Koch, Maximilian; Ale, Angelique; Ntziachristos, Vasilis; Arridge, Simon

2016-02-21

Fluorescence diffuse optical tomography (fDOT) provides 3D images of fluorescence distributions in biological tissue, which represent molecular and cellular processes. The image reconstruction problem is highly ill-posed and requires regularisation techniques to stabilise and find meaningful solutions. Quadratic regularisation tends to either oversmooth or generate very noisy reconstructions, depending on the regularisation strength. Edge preserving methods, such as anisotropic diffusion regularisation (AD), can preserve important features in the fluorescence image and smooth out noise. However, AD has limited ability to distinguish an edge from noise. We propose a patch-based anisotropic diffusion regularisation (PAD), where regularisation strength is determined by a weighted average according to the similarity between patches around voxels within a search window, instead of a simple local neighbourhood strategy. However, this method has higher computational complexity and, hence, we wavelet compress the patches (PAD-WT) to speed it up, while simultaneously taking advantage of the denoising properties of wavelet thresholding. Furthermore, structural information can be incorporated into the image reconstruction with PAD-WT to improve image quality and resolution. In this case, the weights used to average voxels in the image are calculated using the structural image, instead of the fluorescence image. The regularisation strength depends on both structural and fluorescence images, which guarantees that the method can preserve fluorescence information even when it is not structurally visible in the anatomical images. In part 1, we tested the method using a denoising problem. Here, we use simulated and in vivo mouse fDOT data to assess the algorithm performance. Our results show that the proposed PAD-WT method provides high quality and noise free images, superior to those obtained using AD.

Nonlinear Image Denoising Methodologies

DTIC Science & Technology

2002-05-01

53 5.3 A Multiscale Approach to Scale-Space Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 5.4...etc. In this thesis, Our approach to denoising is first based on a controlled nonlinear stochastic random walk to achieve a scale space analysis ( as in... stochastic treatment or interpretation of the diffusion. In addition, unless a specific stopping time is known to be adequate, the resulting evolution

Non local means denoising in photoacoustic imaging

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Siregar, Syahril; Nagaoka, Ryo; Haq, Israr Ul; Saijo, Yoshifumi

2018-07-01

Photoacoustic (PA) imaging has the ability to visualize human organs with high spatial resolution and high contrast. Like digital images, PA images are contaminated with random noise due to some parameters. The band-pass filter does not effectively remove the noise because noise is randomly distributed in the bandwidth frequency. We present noise removal method in PA images by using non local means denoising (NLMD) method. The NLMD can be used if there are similarities or redundancies in the image. PA images contain of blood vessel which repeating on the small patch. The method was tested on PA images of carbon nanotubes in micropipe, in vivo mice brain and in vivo mice ear. We estimated the suggested input parameters of NLMD, so it can be automatically applied after scanning the image in PA imaging system. Our results declared that the NLMD enhanced the image quality of PA images.

Deep architecture neural network-based real-time image processing for image-guided radiotherapy.

PubMed

Mori, Shinichiro

2017-08-01

To develop real-time image processing for image-guided radiotherapy, we evaluated several neural network models for use with different imaging modalities, including X-ray fluoroscopic image denoising. Setup images of prostate cancer patients were acquired with two oblique X-ray fluoroscopic units. Two types of residual network were designed: a convolutional autoencoder (rCAE) and a convolutional neural network (rCNN). We changed the convolutional kernel size and number of convolutional layers for both networks, and the number of pooling and upsampling layers for rCAE. The ground-truth image was applied to the contrast-limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE) method of image processing. Network models were trained to keep the quality of the output image close to that of the ground-truth image from the input image without image processing. For image denoising evaluation, noisy input images were used for the training. More than 6 convolutional layers with convolutional kernels >5×5 improved image quality. However, this did not allow real-time imaging. After applying a pair of pooling and upsampling layers to both networks, rCAEs with >3 convolutions each and rCNNs with >12 convolutions with a pair of pooling and upsampling layers achieved real-time processing at 30 frames per second (fps) with acceptable image quality. Use of our suggested network achieved real-time image processing for contrast enhancement and image denoising by the use of a conventional modern personal computer. Copyright © 2017 Associazione Italiana di Fisica Medica. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A Wiener-Wavelet-Based filter for de-noising satellite soil moisture retrievals

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Massari, Christian; Brocca, Luca; Ciabatta, Luca; Moramarco, Tommaso; Su, Chun-Hsu; Ryu, Dongryeol; Wagner, Wolfgang

2014-05-01

The reduction of noise in microwave satellite soil moisture (SM) retrievals is of paramount importance for practical applications especially for those associated with the study of climate changes, droughts, floods and other related hydrological processes. So far, Fourier based methods have been used for de-noising satellite SM retrievals by filtering either the observed emissivity time series (Du, 2012) or the retrieved SM observations (Su et al. 2013). This contribution introduces an alternative approach based on a Wiener-Wavelet-Based filtering (WWB) technique, which uses the Entropy-Based Wavelet de-noising method developed by Sang et al. (2009) to design both a causal and a non-causal version of the filter. WWB is used as a post-retrieval processing tool to enhance the quality of observations derived from the i) Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for the Earth observing system (AMSR-E), ii) the Advanced SCATterometer (ASCAT), and iii) the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite. The method is tested on three pilot sites located in Spain (Remedhus Network), in Greece (Hydrological Observatory of Athens) and in Australia (Oznet network), respectively. Different quantitative criteria are used to judge the goodness of the de-noising technique. Results show that WWB i) is able to improve both the correlation and the root mean squared differences between satellite retrievals and in situ soil moisture observations, and ii) effectively separates random noise from deterministic components of the retrieved signals. Moreover, the use of WWB de-noised data in place of raw observations within a hydrological application confirms the usefulness of the proposed filtering technique. Du, J. (2012), A method to improve satellite soil moisture retrievals based on Fourier analysis, Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L15404, doi:10.1029/ 2012GL052435 Su,C.-H.,D.Ryu, A. W. Western, and W. Wagner (2013), De-noising of passive and active microwave satellite soil moisture time series, Geophys. Res. Lett., 40,3624-3630, doi:10.1002/grl.50695. Sang Y.-F., D. Wang, J.-C. Wu, Q.-P. Zhu, and L. Wang (2009), Entropy-Based Wavelet De-noising Method for Time Series Analysis, Entropy, 11, pp. 1123-1148, doi:10.3390/e11041123.

A wavelet and least square filter based spatial-spectral denoising approach of hyperspectral imagery

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Ting; Chen, Xiao-Mei; Chen, Gang; Xue, Bo; Ni, Guo-Qiang

2009-11-01

Noise reduction is a crucial step in hyperspectral imagery pre-processing. Based on sensor characteristics, the noise of hyperspectral imagery represents in both spatial and spectral domain. However, most prevailing denosing techniques process the imagery in only one specific domain, which have not utilized multi-domain nature of hyperspectral imagery. In this paper, a new spatial-spectral noise reduction algorithm is proposed, which is based on wavelet analysis and least squares filtering techniques. First, in the spatial domain, a new stationary wavelet shrinking algorithm with improved threshold function is utilized to adjust the noise level band-by-band. This new algorithm uses BayesShrink for threshold estimation, and amends the traditional soft-threshold function by adding shape tuning parameters. Comparing with soft or hard threshold function, the improved one, which is first-order derivable and has a smooth transitional region between noise and signal, could save more details of image edge and weaken Pseudo-Gibbs. Then, in the spectral domain, cubic Savitzky-Golay filter based on least squares method is used to remove spectral noise and artificial noise that may have been introduced in during the spatial denoising. Appropriately selecting the filter window width according to prior knowledge, this algorithm has effective performance in smoothing the spectral curve. The performance of the new algorithm is experimented on a set of Hyperion imageries acquired in 2007. The result shows that the new spatial-spectral denoising algorithm provides more significant signal-to-noise-ratio improvement than traditional spatial or spectral method, while saves the local spectral absorption features better.

Image denoising by a direct variational minimization

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Janev, Marko; Atanacković, Teodor; Pilipović, Stevan; Obradović, Radovan

2011-12-01

In this article we introduce a novel method for the image de-noising which combines a mathematically well-posdenes of the variational modeling with the efficiency of a patch-based approach in the field of image processing. It based on a direct minimization of an energy functional containing a minimal surface regularizer that uses fractional gradient. The minimization is obtained on every predefined patch of the image, independently. By doing so, we avoid the use of an artificial time PDE model with its inherent problems of finding optimal stopping time, as well as the optimal time step. Moreover, we control the level of image smoothing on each patch (and thus on the whole image) by adapting the Lagrange multiplier using the information on the level of discontinuities on a particular patch, which we obtain by pre-processing. In order to reduce the average number of vectors in the approximation generator and still to obtain the minimal degradation, we combine a Ritz variational method for the actual minimization on a patch, and a complementary fractional variational principle. Thus, the proposed method becomes computationally feasible and applicable for practical purposes. We confirm our claims with experimental results, by comparing the proposed method with a couple of PDE-based methods, where we get significantly better denoising results specially on the oscillatory regions.

Parallel transformation of K-SVD solar image denoising algorithm

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liang, Youwen; Tian, Yu; Li, Mei

2017-02-01

The images obtained by observing the sun through a large telescope always suffered with noise due to the low SNR. K-SVD denoising algorithm can effectively remove Gauss white noise. Training dictionaries for sparse representations is a time consuming task, due to the large size of the data involved and to the complexity of the training algorithms. In this paper, an OpenMP parallel programming language is proposed to transform the serial algorithm to the parallel version. Data parallelism model is used to transform the algorithm. Not one atom but multiple atoms updated simultaneously is the biggest change. The denoising effect and acceleration performance are tested after completion of the parallel algorithm. Speedup of the program is 13.563 in condition of using 16 cores. This parallel version can fully utilize the multi-core CPU hardware resources, greatly reduce running time and easily to transplant in multi-core platform.

A sparsity-based simplification method for segmentation of spectral-domain optical coherence tomography images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Meiniel, William; Gan, Yu; Olivo-Marin, Jean-Christophe; Angelini, Elsa

2017-08-01

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) has emerged as a promising image modality to characterize biological tissues. With axio-lateral resolutions at the micron-level, OCT images provide detailed morphological information and enable applications such as optical biopsy and virtual histology for clinical needs. Image enhancement is typically required for morphological segmentation, to improve boundary localization, rather than enrich detailed tissue information. We propose to formulate image enhancement as an image simplification task such that tissue layers are smoothed while contours are enhanced. For this purpose, we exploit a Total Variation sparsity-based image reconstruction, inspired by the Compressed Sensing (CS) theory, but specialized for images with structures arranged in layers. We demonstrate the potential of our approach on OCT human heart and retinal images for layers segmentation. We also compare our image enhancement capabilities to the state-of-the-art denoising techniques.

Multiscale properties of weighted total variation flow with applications to denoising and registration.

PubMed

Athavale, Prashant; Xu, Robert; Radau, Perry; Nachman, Adrian; Wright, Graham A

2015-07-01

Images consist of structures of varying scales: large scale structures such as flat regions, and small scale structures such as noise, textures, and rapidly oscillatory patterns. In the hierarchical (BV, L(2)) image decomposition, Tadmor, et al. (2004) start with extracting coarse scale structures from a given image, and successively extract finer structures from the residuals in each step of the iterative decomposition. We propose to begin instead by extracting the finest structures from the given image and then proceed to extract increasingly coarser structures. In most images, noise could be considered as a fine scale structure. Thus, starting the image decomposition with finer scales, rather than large scales, leads to fast denoising. We note that our approach turns out to be equivalent to the nonstationary regularization in Scherzer and Weickert (2000). The continuous limit of this procedure leads to a time-scaled version of total variation flow. Motivated by specific clinical applications, we introduce an image depending weight in the regularization functional, and study the corresponding weighted TV flow. We show that the edge-preserving property of the multiscale representation of an input image obtained with the weighted TV flow can be enhanced and localized by appropriate choice of the weight. We use this in developing an efficient and edge-preserving denoising algorithm with control on speed and localization properties. We examine analytical properties of the weighted TV flow that give precise information about the denoising speed and the rate of change of energy of the images. An additional contribution of the paper is to use the images obtained at different scales for robust multiscale registration. We show that the inherently multiscale nature of the weighted TV flow improved performance for registration of noisy cardiac MRI images, compared to other methods such as bilateral or Gaussian filtering. A clinical application of the multiscale registration algorithm is also demonstrated for aligning viability assessment magnetic resonance (MR) images from 8 patients with previous myocardial infarctions. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Computer assisted diagnostic system in tumor radiography.

PubMed

Faisal, Ahmed; Parveen, Sharmin; Badsha, Shahriar; Sarwar, Hasan; Reza, Ahmed Wasif

2013-06-01

An improved and efficient method is presented in this paper to achieve a better trade-off between noise removal and edge preservation, thereby detecting the tumor region of MRI brain images automatically. Compass operator has been used in the fourth order Partial Differential Equation (PDE) based denoising technique to preserve the anatomically significant information at the edges. A new morphological technique is also introduced for stripping skull region from the brain images, which consequently leading to the process of detecting tumor accurately. Finally, automatic seeded region growing segmentation based on an improved single seed point selection algorithm is applied to detect the tumor. The method is tested on publicly available MRI brain images and it gives an average PSNR (Peak Signal to Noise Ratio) of 36.49. The obtained results also show detection accuracy of 99.46%, which is a significant improvement than that of the existing results.

Forensic steganalysis: determining the stego key in spatial domain steganography

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fridrich, Jessica; Goljan, Miroslav; Soukal, David; Holotyak, Taras

2005-03-01

This paper is an extension of our work on stego key search for JPEG images published at EI SPIE in 2004. We provide a more general theoretical description of the methodology, apply our approach to the spatial domain, and add a method that determines the stego key from multiple images. We show that in the spatial domain the stego key search can be made significantly more efficient by working with the noise component of the image obtained using a denoising filter. The technique is tested on the LSB embedding paradigm and on a special case of embedding by noise adding (the +/-1 embedding). The stego key search can be performed for a wide class of steganographic techniques even for sizes of secret message well below those detectable using known methods. The proposed strategy may prove useful to forensic analysts and law enforcement.

Speckle noise reduction in quantitative optical metrology techniques by application of the discrete wavelet transformation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Furlong, Cosme; Pryputniewicz, Ryszard J.

2002-06-01

Effective suppression of speckle noise content in interferometric data images can help in improving accuracy and resolution of the results obtained with interferometric optical metrology techniques. In this paper, novel speckle noise reduction algorithms based on the discrete wavelet transformation are presented. The algorithms proceed by: (a) estimating the noise level contained in the interferograms of interest, (b) selecting wavelet families, (c) applying the wavelet transformation using the selected families, (d) wavelet thresholding, and (e) applying the inverse wavelet transformation, producing denoised interferograms. The algorithms are applied to the different stages of the processing procedures utilized for generation of quantitative speckle correlation interferometry data of fiber-optic based opto-electronic holography (FOBOEH) techniques, allowing identification of optimal processing conditions. It is shown that wavelet algorithms are effective for speckle noise reduction while preserving image features otherwise faded with other algorithms.

Tomographic reconstruction of tokamak plasma light emission from single image using wavelet-vaguelette decomposition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nguyen van yen, R.; Fedorczak, N.; Brochard, F.; Bonhomme, G.; Schneider, K.; Farge, M.; Monier-Garbet, P.

2012-01-01

Images acquired by cameras installed in tokamaks are difficult to interpret because the three-dimensional structure of the plasma is flattened in a non-trivial way. Nevertheless, taking advantage of the slow variation of the fluctuations along magnetic field lines, the optical transformation may be approximated by a generalized Abel transform, for which we propose an inversion technique based on the wavelet-vaguelette decomposition. After validation of the new method using an academic test case and numerical data obtained with the Tokam 2D code, we present an application to an experimental movie obtained in the tokamak Tore Supra. A comparison with a classical regularization technique for ill-posed inverse problems, the singular value decomposition, allows us to assess the efficiency. The superiority of the wavelet-vaguelette technique is reflected in preserving local features, such as blobs and fronts, in the denoised emissivity map.

Image denoising and deblurring using multispectral data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Semenishchev, E. A.; Voronin, V. V.; Marchuk, V. I.

2017-05-01

Currently decision-making systems get widespread. These systems are based on the analysis video sequences and also additional data. They are volume, change size, the behavior of one or a group of objects, temperature gradient, the presence of local areas with strong differences, and others. Security and control system are main areas of application. A noise on the images strongly influences the subsequent processing and decision making. This paper considers the problem of primary signal processing for solving the tasks of image denoising and deblurring of multispectral data. The additional information from multispectral channels can improve the efficiency of object classification. In this paper we use method of combining information about the objects obtained by the cameras in different frequency bands. We apply method based on simultaneous minimization L2 and the first order square difference sequence of estimates to denoising and restoring the blur on the edges. In case of loss of the information will be applied an approach based on the interpolation of data taken from the analysis of objects located in other areas and information obtained from multispectral camera. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is shown in a set of test images.

Smartphones as image processing systems for prosthetic vision.

PubMed

Zapf, Marc P; Matteucci, Paul B; Lovell, Nigel H; Suaning, Gregg J

2013-01-01

The feasibility of implants for prosthetic vision has been demonstrated by research and commercial organizations. In most devices, an essential forerunner to the internal stimulation circuit is an external electronics solution for capturing, processing and relaying image information as well as extracting useful features from the scene surrounding the patient. The capabilities and multitude of image processing algorithms that can be performed by the device in real-time plays a major part in the final quality of the prosthetic vision. It is therefore optimal to use powerful hardware yet to avoid bulky, straining solutions. Recent publications have reported of portable single-board computers fast enough for computationally intensive image processing. Following the rapid evolution of commercial, ultra-portable ARM (Advanced RISC machine) mobile devices, the authors investigated the feasibility of modern smartphones running complex face detection as external processing devices for vision implants. The role of dedicated graphics processors in speeding up computation was evaluated while performing a demanding noise reduction algorithm (image denoising). The time required for face detection was found to decrease by 95% from 2.5 year old to recent devices. In denoising, graphics acceleration played a major role, speeding up denoising by a factor of 18. These results demonstrate that the technology has matured sufficiently to be considered as a valid external electronics platform for visual prosthetic research.

Adaptive bilateral filter for image denoising and its application to in-vitro Time-of-Flight data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Seitel, Alexander; dos Santos, Thiago R.; Mersmann, Sven; Penne, Jochen; Groch, Anja; Yung, Kwong; Tetzlaff, Ralf; Meinzer, Hans-Peter; Maier-Hein, Lena

2011-03-01

Image-guided therapy systems generally require registration of pre-operative planning data with the patient's anatomy. One common approach to achieve this is to acquire intra-operative surface data and match it to surfaces extracted from the planning image. Although increasingly popular for surface generation in general, the novel Time-of-Flight (ToF) technology has not yet been applied in this context. This may be attributed to the fact that the ToF range images are subject to considerable noise. The contribution of this study is two-fold. Firstly, we present an adaption of the well-known bilateral filter for denoising ToF range images based on the noise characteristics of the camera. Secondly, we assess the quality of organ surfaces generated from ToF range data with and without bilateral smoothing using corresponding high resolution CT data as ground truth. According to an evaluation on five porcine organs, the root mean squared (RMS) distance between the denoised ToF data points and the reference computed tomography (CT) surfaces ranged from 3.0 mm (lung) to 9.0 mm (kidney). This corresponds to an error-reduction of up to 36% compared to the error of the original ToF surfaces.

Bayesian denoising in digital radiography: a comparison in the dental field.

PubMed

Frosio, I; Olivieri, C; Lucchese, M; Borghese, N A; Boccacci, P

2013-01-01

We compared two Bayesian denoising algorithms for digital radiographs, based on Total Variation regularization and wavelet decomposition. The comparison was performed on simulated radiographs with different photon counts and frequency content and on real dental radiographs. Four different quality indices were considered to quantify the quality of the filtered radiographs. The experimental results suggested that Total Variation is more suited to preserve fine anatomical details, whereas wavelets produce images of higher quality at global scale; they also highlighted the need for more reliable image quality indices. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

De-noising of 3D multiple-coil MR images using modified LMMSE estimator.

PubMed

Yaghoobi, Nima; Hasanzadeh, Reza P R

2018-06-20

De-noising is a crucial topic in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) which focuses on less loss of Magnetic Resonance (MR) image information and details preservation during the noise suppression. Nowadays multiple-coil MRI system is preferred to single one due to its acceleration in the imaging process. Due to the fact that the model of noise in single-coil and multiple-coil MRI systems are different, the de-noising methods that mostly are adapted to single-coil MRI systems, do not work appropriately with multiple-coil one. The model of noise in single-coil MRI systems is Rician while in multiple-coil one (if no subsampling occurs in k-space or GRAPPA reconstruction process is being done in the coils), it obeys noncentral Chi (nc-χ). In this paper, a new filtering method based on the Linear Minimum Mean Square Error (LMMSE) estimator is proposed for multiple-coil MR Images ruined by nc-χ noise. In the presented method, to have an optimum similarity selection of voxels, the Bayesian Mean Square Error (BMSE) criterion is used and proved for nc-χ noise model and also a nonlocal voxel selection methodology is proposed for nc-χ distribution. The results illustrate robust and accurate performance compared to the related state-of-the-art methods, either on ideal nc-χ images or GRAPPA reconstructed ones. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Denoising in digital speckle pattern interferometry using wave atoms.

PubMed

Federico, Alejandro; Kaufmann, Guillermo H

2007-05-15

We present an effective method for speckle noise removal in digital speckle pattern interferometry, which is based on a wave-atom thresholding technique. Wave atoms are a variant of 2D wavelet packets with a parabolic scaling relation and improve the sparse representation of fringe patterns when compared with traditional expansions. The performance of the denoising method is analyzed by using computer-simulated fringes, and the results are compared with those produced by wavelet and curvelet thresholding techniques. An application of the proposed method to reduce speckle noise in experimental data is also presented.

Examples of subjective image quality enhancement in multimedia

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Klíma, Miloš; Pazderák, Jiří; Fliegel, Karel

2007-09-01

The subjective image quality is an important issue in all multimedia imaging systems with a significant impact onto QoS (Quality of Service). For long time the image fidelity criterion was widely applied in technical systems esp. in both television and image source compression fields but the optimization of subjective perception quality and fidelity approach (such as the minimum of MSE) are very different. The paper presents an experimental testing of three different digital techniques for the subjective image quality enhancement - color saturation, edge enhancement, denoising operators and noise addition - well known from both the digital photography and video. The evaluation has been done for extensive operator parameterization and the results are summarized and discussed. It has been demonstrated that there are relevant types of image corrections improving to some extent the subjective perception of the image. The above mentioned techniques have been tested for five image tests with significantly different image characteristics (fine details, large saturated color areas, high color contrast, easy-to-remember colors etc.). The experimental results show the way to optimized use of image enhancing operators. Finally the concept of impressiveness as a new possible expression of subjective quality improvement is presented and discussed.

Denoised ordered subset statistically penalized algebraic reconstruction technique (DOS-SPART) in digital breast tomosynthesis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Garrett, John; Li, Yinsheng; Li, Ke; Chen, Guang-Hong

2017-03-01

Digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) is a three dimensional (3D) breast imaging modality in which projections are acquired over a limited angular span around the compressed breast and reconstructed into image slices parallel to the detector. DBT has been shown to help alleviate the breast tissue overlapping issues of two dimensional (2D) mammography. Since the overlapping tissues may simulate cancer masses or obscure true cancers, this improvement is critically important for improved breast cancer screening and diagnosis. In this work, a model-based image reconstruction method is presented to show that spatial resolution in DBT volumes can be maintained while dose is reduced using the presented method when compared to that of a state-of-the-art commercial reconstruction technique. Spatial resolution was measured in phantom images and subjectively in a clinical dataset. Noise characteristics were explored in a cadaver study. In both the quantitative and subjective results the image sharpness was maintained and overall image quality was maintained at reduced doses when the model-based iterative reconstruction was used to reconstruct the volumes.

An Interactive Procedure to Preserve the Desired Edges during the Image Processing of Noise Reduction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hsu, Chih-Yu; Huang, Hsuan-Yu; Lee, Lin-Tsang

2010-12-01

The paper propose a new procedure including four stages in order to preserve the desired edges during the image processing of noise reduction. A denoised image can be obtained from a noisy image at the first stage of the procedure. At the second stage, an edge map can be obtained by the Canny edge detector to find the edges of the object contours. Manual modification of an edge map at the third stage is optional to capture all the desired edges of the object contours. At the final stage, a new method called Edge Preserved Inhomogeneous Diffusion Equation (EPIDE) is used to smooth the noisy images or the previously denoised image at the first stage for achieving the edge preservation. The Optical Character Recognition (OCR) results in the experiments show that the proposed procedure has the best recognition result because of the capability of edge preservation.

Incrementing data quality of multi-frequency echograms using the Adaptive Wiener Filter (AWF) denoising algorithm

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Peña, M.

2016-10-01

Achieving acceptable signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) can be difficult when working in sparsely populated waters and/or when species have low scattering such as fluid filled animals. The increasing use of higher frequencies and the study of deeper depths in fisheries acoustics, as well as the use of commercial vessels, is raising the need to employ good denoising algorithms. The use of a lower Sv threshold to remove noise or unwanted targets is not suitable in many cases and increases the relative background noise component in the echogram, demanding more effectiveness from denoising algorithms. The Adaptive Wiener Filter (AWF) denoising algorithm is presented in this study. The technique is based on the AWF commonly used in digital photography and video enhancement. The algorithm firstly increments the quality of the data with a variance-dependent smoothing, before estimating the noise level as the envelope of the Sv minima. The AWF denoising algorithm outperforms existing algorithms in the presence of gaussian, speckle and salt & pepper noise, although impulse noise needs to be previously removed. Cleaned echograms present homogenous echotraces with outlined edges.

E-Nose Vapor Identification Based on Dempster-Shafer Fusion of Multiple Classifiers

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Li, Winston; Leung, Henry; Kwan, Chiman; Linnell, Bruce R.

2005-01-01

Electronic nose (e-nose) vapor identification is an efficient approach to monitor air contaminants in space stations and shuttles in order to ensure the health and safety of astronauts. Data preprocessing (measurement denoising and feature extraction) and pattern classification are important components of an e-nose system. In this paper, a wavelet-based denoising method is applied to filter the noisy sensor measurements. Transient-state features are then extracted from the denoised sensor measurements, and are used to train multiple classifiers such as multi-layer perceptions (MLP), support vector machines (SVM), k nearest neighbor (KNN), and Parzen classifier. The Dempster-Shafer (DS) technique is used at the end to fuse the results of the multiple classifiers to get the final classification. Experimental analysis based on real vapor data shows that the wavelet denoising method can remove both random noise and outliers successfully, and the classification rate can be improved by using classifier fusion.

An MRI denoising method using image data redundancy and local SNR estimation.

PubMed

Golshan, Hosein M; Hasanzadeh, Reza P R; Yousefzadeh, Shahrokh C

2013-09-01

This paper presents an LMMSE-based method for the three-dimensional (3D) denoising of MR images assuming a Rician noise model. Conventionally, the LMMSE method estimates the noise-less signal values using the observed MR data samples within local neighborhoods. This is not an efficient procedure to deal with this issue while the 3D MR data intrinsically includes many similar samples that can be used to improve the estimation results. To overcome this problem, we model MR data as random fields and establish a principled way which is capable of choosing the samples not only from a local neighborhood but also from a large portion of the given data. To follow the similar samples within the MR data, an effective similarity measure based on the local statistical moments of images is presented. The parameters of the proposed filter are automatically chosen from the estimated local signal-to-noise ratio. To further enhance the denoising performance, a recursive version of the introduced approach is also addressed. The proposed filter is compared with related state-of-the-art filters using both synthetic and real MR datasets. The experimental results demonstrate the superior performance of our proposal in removing the noise and preserving the anatomical structures of MR images. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The application of wavelet denoising in material discrimination system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fu, Kenneth; Ranta, Dale; Guest, Clark; Das, Pankaj

2010-01-01

Recently, the need for cargo inspection imaging systems to provide a material discrimination function has become desirable. This is done by scanning the cargo container with x-rays at two different energy levels. The ratio of attenuations of the two energy scans can provide information on the composition of the material. However, with the statistical error from noise, the accuracy of such systems can be low. Because the moving source emits two energies of x-rays alternately, images from the two scans will not be identical. That means edges of objects in the two images are not perfectly aligned. Moreover, digitization creates blurry-edge artifacts. Different energy x-rays produce different edge spread functions. Those combined effects contribute to a source of false classification namely, the "edge effect." Other types of false classification are caused by noise, mainly Poisson noise associated with photons. The Poisson noise in xray images can be dealt with using either a Wiener filter or a wavelet shrinkage denoising approach. In this paper, we propose a method that uses the wavelet shrinkage denoising approach to enhance the performance of the material identification system. Test results show that this wavelet-based approach has improved performance in object detection and eliminating false positives due to the edge effects.

Correction of defective pixels for medical and space imagers based on Ising Theory

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cohen, Eliahu; Shnitser, Moriel; Avraham, Tsvika; Hadar, Ofer

2014-09-01

We propose novel models for image restoration based on statistical physics. We investigate the affinity between these fields and describe a framework from which interesting denoising algorithms can be derived: Ising-like models and simulated annealing techniques. When combined with known predictors such as Median and LOCO-I, these models become even more effective. In order to further examine the proposed models we apply them to two important problems: (i) Digital Cameras in space damaged from cosmic radiation. (ii) Ultrasonic medical devices damaged from speckle noise. The results, as well as benchmark and comparisons, suggest in most of the cases a significant gain in PSNR and SSIM in comparison to other filters.

Elimination of white Gaussian noise in arterial phase CT images to bring adrenal tumours into the forefront.

PubMed

Koyuncu, Hasan; Ceylan, Rahime

2018-04-01

Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced Computed Tomography (DCE-CT) is applied to observe adrenal tumours in detail by utilising from the contrast matter, which generally brings the tumour into the forefront. However, DCE-CT images are generally influenced by noises that occur as the result of the trade-off between radiation doses vs. noise. Herein, this situation constitutes a challenge in the achievement of accurate tumour segmentation. In CT images, most of the noises are similar to Gaussian Noise. In this study, arterial phase CT images containing adrenal tumours are utilised, and elimination of Gaussian Noise is realised by fourteen different techniques reported in literature for the achievement of the best denoising process. In this study, the Block Matching and 3D Filtering (BM3D) algorithm typically achieve reliable Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratios (PSNR) and resolves challenges of similar techniques when addressing different levels of noise. Furthermore, BM3D obtains the best mean PSNR values among the first five techniques. BM3D outperforms to other techniques by obtaining better Total Statistical Success (TSS), CPU time and computation cost. Consequently, it prepares clearer arterial phase CT images for the next step (segmentation of adrenal tumours). Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A New Pixels Flipping Method for Huge Watermarking Capacity of the Invoice Font Image

PubMed Central

Li, Li; Hou, Qingzheng; Lu, Jianfeng; Dai, Junping; Mao, Xiaoyang; Chang, Chin-Chen

2014-01-01

Invoice printing just has two-color printing, so invoice font image can be seen as binary image. To embed watermarks into invoice image, the pixels need to be flipped. The more huge the watermark is, the more the pixels need to be flipped. We proposed a new pixels flipping method in invoice image for huge watermarking capacity. The pixels flipping method includes one novel interpolation method for binary image, one flippable pixels evaluation mechanism, and one denoising method based on gravity center and chaos degree. The proposed interpolation method ensures that the invoice image keeps features well after scaling. The flippable pixels evaluation mechanism ensures that the pixels keep better connectivity and smoothness and the pattern has highest structural similarity after flipping. The proposed denoising method makes invoice font image smoother and fiter for human vision. Experiments show that the proposed flipping method not only keeps the invoice font structure well but also improves watermarking capacity. PMID:25489606

Ultrasound speckle reduction based on fractional order differentiation.

PubMed

Shao, Dangguo; Zhou, Ting; Liu, Fan; Yi, Sanli; Xiang, Yan; Ma, Lei; Xiong, Xin; He, Jianfeng

2017-07-01

Ultrasound images show a granular pattern of noise known as speckle that diminishes their quality and results in difficulties in diagnosis. To preserve edges and features, this paper proposes a fractional differentiation-based image operator to reduce speckle in ultrasound. An image de-noising model based on fractional partial differential equations with balance relation between k (gradient modulus threshold that controls the conduction) and v (the order of fractional differentiation) was constructed by the effective combination of fractional calculus theory and a partial differential equation, and the numerical algorithm of it was achieved using a fractional differential mask operator. The proposed algorithm has better speckle reduction and structure preservation than the three existing methods [P-M model, the speckle reducing anisotropic diffusion (SRAD) technique, and the detail preserving anisotropic diffusion (DPAD) technique]. And it is significantly faster than bilateral filtering (BF) in producing virtually the same experimental results. Ultrasound phantom testing and in vivo imaging show that the proposed method can improve the quality of an ultrasound image in terms of tissue SNR, CNR, and FOM values.

Simultaneous Denoising, Deconvolution, and Demixing of Calcium Imaging Data

PubMed Central

Pnevmatikakis, Eftychios A.; Soudry, Daniel; Gao, Yuanjun; Machado, Timothy A.; Merel, Josh; Pfau, David; Reardon, Thomas; Mu, Yu; Lacefield, Clay; Yang, Weijian; Ahrens, Misha; Bruno, Randy; Jessell, Thomas M.; Peterka, Darcy S.; Yuste, Rafael; Paninski, Liam

2016-01-01

SUMMARY We present a modular approach for analyzing calcium imaging recordings of large neuronal ensembles. Our goal is to simultaneously identify the locations of the neurons, demix spatially overlapping components, and denoise and deconvolve the spiking activity from the slow dynamics of the calcium indicator. Our approach relies on a constrained nonnegative matrix factorization that expresses the spatiotemporal fluorescence activity as the product of a spatial matrix that encodes the spatial footprint of each neuron in the optical field and a temporal matrix that characterizes the calcium concentration of each neuron over time. This framework is combined with a novel constrained deconvolution approach that extracts estimates of neural activity from fluorescence traces, to create a spatiotemporal processing algorithm that requires minimal parameter tuning. We demonstrate the general applicability of our method by applying it to in vitro and in vivo multineuronal imaging data, whole-brain light-sheet imaging data, and dendritic imaging data. PMID:26774160

Speckle reduction during all-fiber common-path optical coherence tomography of the cavernous nerves

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chitchian, Shahab; Fiddy, Michael; Fried, Nathaniel M.

2009-02-01

Improvements in identification, imaging, and visualization of the cavernous nerves during prostate cancer surgery, which are responsible for erectile function, may improve nerve preservation and postoperative sexual potency. In this study, we use a rat prostate, ex vivo, to evaluate the feasibility of optical coherence tomography (OCT) as a diagnostic tool for real-time imaging and identification of the cavernous nerves. A novel OCT system based on an all single-mode fiber common-path interferometer-based scanning system is used for this purpose. A wavelet shrinkage denoising technique using Stein's unbiased risk estimator (SURE) algorithm to calculate a data-adaptive threshold is implemented for speckle noise reduction in the OCT image. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) was improved by 9 dB and the image quality metrics of the cavernous nerves also improved significantly.

Graph-cut based discrete-valued image reconstruction.

PubMed

Tuysuzoglu, Ahmet; Karl, W Clem; Stojanovic, Ivana; Castañòn, David; Ünlü, M Selim

2015-05-01

Efficient graph-cut methods have been used with great success for labeling and denoising problems occurring in computer vision. Unfortunately, the presence of linear image mappings has prevented the use of these techniques in most discrete-amplitude image reconstruction problems. In this paper, we develop a graph-cut based framework for the direct solution of discrete amplitude linear image reconstruction problems cast as regularized energy function minimizations. We first analyze the structure of discrete linear inverse problem cost functions to show that the obstacle to the application of graph-cut methods to their solution is the variable mixing caused by the presence of the linear sensing operator. We then propose to use a surrogate energy functional that overcomes the challenges imposed by the sensing operator yet can be utilized efficiently in existing graph-cut frameworks. We use this surrogate energy functional to devise a monotonic iterative algorithm for the solution of discrete valued inverse problems. We first provide experiments using local convolutional operators and show the robustness of the proposed technique to noise and stability to changes in regularization parameter. Then we focus on nonlocal, tomographic examples where we consider limited-angle data problems. We compare our technique with state-of-the-art discrete and continuous image reconstruction techniques. Experiments show that the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art techniques in challenging scenarios involving discrete valued unknowns.

CUDA-based acceleration of collateral filtering in brain MR images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Cheng-Yuan; Chang, Herng-Hua

2017-02-01

Image denoising is one of the fundamental and essential tasks within image processing. In medical imaging, finding an effective algorithm that can remove random noise in MR images is important. This paper proposes an effective noise reduction method for brain magnetic resonance (MR) images. Our approach is based on the collateral filter which is a more powerful method than the bilateral filter in many cases. However, the computation of the collateral filter algorithm is quite time-consuming. To solve this problem, we improved the collateral filter algorithm with parallel computing using GPU. We adopted CUDA, an application programming interface for GPU by NVIDIA, to accelerate the computation. Our experimental evaluation on an Intel Xeon CPU E5-2620 v3 2.40GHz with a NVIDIA Tesla K40c GPU indicated that the proposed implementation runs dramatically faster than the traditional collateral filter. We believe that the proposed framework has established a general blueprint for achieving fast and robust filtering in a wide variety of medical image denoising applications.

Imaging reconstruction based on improved wavelet denoising combined with parallel-beam filtered back-projection algorithm

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ren, Zhong; Liu, Guodong; Huang, Zhen

2012-11-01

The image reconstruction is a key step in medical imaging (MI) and its algorithm's performance determinates the quality and resolution of reconstructed image. Although some algorithms have been used, filter back-projection (FBP) algorithm is still the classical and commonly-used algorithm in clinical MI. In FBP algorithm, filtering of original projection data is a key step in order to overcome artifact of the reconstructed image. Since simple using of classical filters, such as Shepp-Logan (SL), Ram-Lak (RL) filter have some drawbacks and limitations in practice, especially for the projection data polluted by non-stationary random noises. So, an improved wavelet denoising combined with parallel-beam FBP algorithm is used to enhance the quality of reconstructed image in this paper. In the experiments, the reconstructed effects were compared between the improved wavelet denoising and others (directly FBP, mean filter combined FBP and median filter combined FBP method). To determine the optimum reconstruction effect, different algorithms, and different wavelet bases combined with three filters were respectively test. Experimental results show the reconstruction effect of improved FBP algorithm is better than that of others. Comparing the results of different algorithms based on two evaluation standards i.e. mean-square error (MSE), peak-to-peak signal-noise ratio (PSNR), it was found that the reconstructed effects of the improved FBP based on db2 and Hanning filter at decomposition scale 2 was best, its MSE value was less and the PSNR value was higher than others. Therefore, this improved FBP algorithm has potential value in the medical imaging.

SparseCT: interrupted-beam acquisition and sparse reconstruction for radiation dose reduction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Koesters, Thomas; Knoll, Florian; Sodickson, Aaron; Sodickson, Daniel K.; Otazo, Ricardo

2017-03-01

State-of-the-art low-dose CT methods reduce the x-ray tube current and use iterative reconstruction methods to denoise the resulting images. However, due to compromises between denoising and image quality, only moderate dose reductions up to 30-40% are accepted in clinical practice. An alternative approach is to reduce the number of x-ray projections and use compressed sensing to reconstruct the full-tube-current undersampled data. This idea was recognized in the early days of compressed sensing and proposals for CT dose reduction appeared soon afterwards. However, no practical means of undersampling has yet been demonstrated in the challenging environment of a rapidly rotating CT gantry. In this work, we propose a moving multislit collimator as a practical incoherent undersampling scheme for compressed sensing CT and evaluate its application for radiation dose reduction. The proposed collimator is composed of narrow slits and moves linearly along the slice dimension (z), to interrupt the incident beam in different slices for each x-ray tube angle (θ). The reduced projection dataset is then reconstructed using a sparse approach, where 3D image gradients are employed to enforce sparsity. The effects of the collimator slits on the beam profile were measured and represented as a continuous slice profile. SparseCT was tested using retrospective undersampling and compared against commercial current-reduction techniques on phantoms and in vivo studies. Initial results suggest that SparseCT may enable higher performance than current-reduction, particularly for high dose reduction factors.

Enhancing speech recognition using improved particle swarm optimization based hidden Markov model.

PubMed

Selvaraj, Lokesh; Ganesan, Balakrishnan

2014-01-01

Enhancing speech recognition is the primary intention of this work. In this paper a novel speech recognition method based on vector quantization and improved particle swarm optimization (IPSO) is suggested. The suggested methodology contains four stages, namely, (i) denoising, (ii) feature mining (iii), vector quantization, and (iv) IPSO based hidden Markov model (HMM) technique (IP-HMM). At first, the speech signals are denoised using median filter. Next, characteristics such as peak, pitch spectrum, Mel frequency Cepstral coefficients (MFCC), mean, standard deviation, and minimum and maximum of the signal are extorted from the denoised signal. Following that, to accomplish the training process, the extracted characteristics are given to genetic algorithm based codebook generation in vector quantization. The initial populations are created by selecting random code vectors from the training set for the codebooks for the genetic algorithm process and IP-HMM helps in doing the recognition. At this point the creativeness will be done in terms of one of the genetic operation crossovers. The proposed speech recognition technique offers 97.14% accuracy.

Dynamic PET Image reconstruction for parametric imaging using the HYPR kernel method

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Spencer, Benjamin; Qi, Jinyi; Badawi, Ramsey D.; Wang, Guobao

2017-03-01

Dynamic PET image reconstruction is a challenging problem because of the ill-conditioned nature of PET and the lowcounting statistics resulted from short time-frames in dynamic imaging. The kernel method for image reconstruction has been developed to improve image reconstruction of low-count PET data by incorporating prior information derived from high-count composite data. In contrast to most of the existing regularization-based methods, the kernel method embeds image prior information in the forward projection model and does not require an explicit regularization term in the reconstruction formula. Inspired by the existing highly constrained back-projection (HYPR) algorithm for dynamic PET image denoising, we propose in this work a new type of kernel that is simpler to implement and further improves the kernel-based dynamic PET image reconstruction. Our evaluation study using a physical phantom scan with synthetic FDG tracer kinetics has demonstrated that the new HYPR kernel-based reconstruction can achieve a better region-of-interest (ROI) bias versus standard deviation trade-off for dynamic PET parametric imaging than the post-reconstruction HYPR denoising method and the previously used nonlocal-means kernel.

MLESAC Based Localization of Needle Insertion Using 2D Ultrasound Images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xu, Fei; Gao, Dedong; Wang, Shan; Zhanwen, A.

2018-04-01

In the 2D ultrasound image of ultrasound-guided percutaneous needle insertions, it is difficult to determine the positions of needle axis and tip because of the existence of artifacts and other noises. In this work the speckle is regarded as the noise of an ultrasound image, and a novel algorithm is presented to detect the needle in a 2D ultrasound image. Firstly, the wavelet soft thresholding technique based on BayesShrink rule is used to denoise the speckle of ultrasound image. Secondly, we add Otsu’s thresholding method and morphologic operations to pre-process the ultrasound image. Finally, the localization of the needle is identified and positioned in the 2D ultrasound image based on the maximum likelihood estimation sample consensus (MLESAC) algorithm. The experimental results show that it is valid for estimating the position of needle axis and tip in the ultrasound images with the proposed algorithm. The research work is hopeful to be used in the path planning and robot-assisted needle insertion procedures.

Denoised Wigner distribution deconvolution via low-rank matrix completion

DOE PAGES

Lee, Justin; Barbastathis, George

2016-08-23

Wigner distribution deconvolution (WDD) is a decades-old method for recovering phase from intensity measurements. Although the technique offers an elegant linear solution to the quadratic phase retrieval problem, it has seen limited adoption due to its high computational/memory requirements and the fact that the technique often exhibits high noise sensitivity. Here, we propose a method for noise suppression in WDD via low-rank noisy matrix completion. Our technique exploits the redundancy of an object’s phase space to denoise its WDD reconstruction. We show in model calculations that our technique outperforms other WDD algorithms as well as modern iterative methods for phasemore » retrieval such as ptychography. Here, our results suggest that a class of phase retrieval techniques relying on regularized direct inversion of ptychographic datasets (instead of iterative reconstruction techniques) can provide accurate quantitative phase information in the presence of high levels of noise.« less

Denoised Wigner distribution deconvolution via low-rank matrix completion

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Lee, Justin; Barbastathis, George

Wigner distribution deconvolution (WDD) is a decades-old method for recovering phase from intensity measurements. Although the technique offers an elegant linear solution to the quadratic phase retrieval problem, it has seen limited adoption due to its high computational/memory requirements and the fact that the technique often exhibits high noise sensitivity. Here, we propose a method for noise suppression in WDD via low-rank noisy matrix completion. Our technique exploits the redundancy of an object’s phase space to denoise its WDD reconstruction. We show in model calculations that our technique outperforms other WDD algorithms as well as modern iterative methods for phasemore » retrieval such as ptychography. Here, our results suggest that a class of phase retrieval techniques relying on regularized direct inversion of ptychographic datasets (instead of iterative reconstruction techniques) can provide accurate quantitative phase information in the presence of high levels of noise.« less

Reconstructing Interlaced High-Dynamic-Range Video Using Joint Learning.

PubMed

Inchang Choi; Seung-Hwan Baek; Kim, Min H

2017-11-01

For extending the dynamic range of video, it is a common practice to capture multiple frames sequentially with different exposures and combine them to extend the dynamic range of each video frame. However, this approach results in typical ghosting artifacts due to fast and complex motion in nature. As an alternative, video imaging with interlaced exposures has been introduced to extend the dynamic range. However, the interlaced approach has been hindered by jaggy artifacts and sensor noise, leading to concerns over image quality. In this paper, we propose a data-driven approach for jointly solving two specific problems of deinterlacing and denoising that arise in interlaced video imaging with different exposures. First, we solve the deinterlacing problem using joint dictionary learning via sparse coding. Since partial information of detail in differently exposed rows is often available via interlacing, we make use of the information to reconstruct details of the extended dynamic range from the interlaced video input. Second, we jointly solve the denoising problem by tailoring sparse coding to better handle additive noise in low-/high-exposure rows, and also adopt multiscale homography flow to temporal sequences for denoising. We anticipate that the proposed method will allow for concurrent capture of higher dynamic range video frames without suffering from ghosting artifacts. We demonstrate the advantages of our interlaced video imaging compared with the state-of-the-art high-dynamic-range video methods.

A Laplacian based image filtering using switching noise detector.

PubMed

Ranjbaran, Ali; Hassan, Anwar Hasni Abu; Jafarpour, Mahboobe; Ranjbaran, Bahar

2015-01-01

This paper presents a Laplacian-based image filtering method. Using a local noise estimator function in an energy functional minimizing scheme we show that Laplacian that has been known as an edge detection function can be used for noise removal applications. The algorithm can be implemented on a 3x3 window and easily tuned by number of iterations. Image denoising is simplified to the reduction of the pixels value with their related Laplacian value weighted by local noise estimator. The only parameter which controls smoothness is the number of iterations. Noise reduction quality of the introduced method is evaluated and compared with some classic algorithms like Wiener and Total Variation based filters for Gaussian noise. And also the method compared with the state-of-the-art method BM3D for some images. The algorithm appears to be easy, fast and comparable with many classic denoising algorithms for Gaussian noise.

Blurred Star Image Processing for Star Sensors under Dynamic Conditions

PubMed Central

Zhang, Weina; Quan, Wei; Guo, Lei

2012-01-01

The precision of star point location is significant to identify the star map and to acquire the aircraft attitude for star sensors. Under dynamic conditions, star images are not only corrupted by various noises, but also blurred due to the angular rate of the star sensor. According to different angular rates under dynamic conditions, a novel method is proposed in this article, which includes a denoising method based on adaptive wavelet threshold and a restoration method based on the large angular rate. The adaptive threshold is adopted for denoising the star image when the angular rate is in the dynamic range. Then, the mathematical model of motion blur is deduced so as to restore the blurred star map due to large angular rate. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, which is suitable for blurred star image processing and practical for attitude determination of satellites under dynamic conditions. PMID:22778666

Application of adaptive filters in denoising magnetocardiogram signals

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Khan, Pathan Fayaz; Patel, Rajesh; Sengottuvel, S.; Saipriya, S.; Swain, Pragyna Parimita; Gireesan, K.

2017-05-01

Magnetocardiography (MCG) is the measurement of weak magnetic fields from the heart using Superconducting QUantum Interference Devices (SQUID). Though the measurements are performed inside magnetically shielded rooms (MSR) to reduce external electromagnetic disturbances, interferences which are caused by sources inside the shielded room could not be attenuated. The work presented here reports the application of adaptive filters to denoise MCG signals. Two adaptive noise cancellation approaches namely least mean squared (LMS) algorithm and recursive least squared (RLS) algorithm are applied to denoise MCG signals and the results are compared. It is found that both the algorithms effectively remove noisy wiggles from MCG traces; significantly improving the quality of the cardiac features in MCG traces. The calculated signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for the denoised MCG traces is found to be slightly higher in the LMS algorithm as compared to the RLS algorithm. The results encourage the use of adaptive techniques to suppress noise due to power line frequency and its harmonics which occur frequently in biomedical measurements.

Image features dependant correlation-weighting function for efficient PRNU based source camera identification.

PubMed

Tiwari, Mayank; Gupta, Bhupendra

2018-04-01

For source camera identification (SCI), photo response non-uniformity (PRNU) has been widely used as the fingerprint of the camera. The PRNU is extracted from the image by applying a de-noising filter then taking the difference between the original image and the de-noised image. However, it is observed that intensity-based features and high-frequency details (edges and texture) of the image, effect quality of the extracted PRNU. This effects correlation calculation and creates problems in SCI. For solving this problem, we propose a weighting function based on image features. We have experimentally identified image features (intensity and high-frequency contents) effect on the estimated PRNU, and then develop a weighting function which gives higher weights to image regions which give reliable PRNU and at the same point it gives comparatively less weights to the image regions which do not give reliable PRNU. Experimental results show that the proposed weighting function is able to improve the accuracy of SCI up to a great extent. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A new algorithm for ECG interference removal from single channel EMG recording.

PubMed

Yazdani, Shayan; Azghani, Mahmood Reza; Sedaaghi, Mohammad Hossein

2017-09-01

This paper presents a new method to remove electrocardiogram (ECG) interference from electromyogram (EMG). This interference occurs during the EMG acquisition from trunk muscles. The proposed algorithm employs progressive image denoising (PID) algorithm and ensembles empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) to remove this type of interference. PID is a very recent method that is being used for denoising digital images mixed with white Gaussian noise. It detects white Gaussian noise by deterministic annealing. To the best of our knowledge, PID has never been used before, in the case of EMG and ECG separation or in other 1D signal denoising applications. We have used it according to this fact that amplitude of the EMG signal can be modeled as white Gaussian noise using a filter with time-variant properties. The proposed algorithm has been compared to the other well-known methods such as HPF, EEMD-ICA, Wavelet-ICA and PID. The results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the others, on the basis of three evaluation criteria used in this paper: Normalized mean square error, Signal to noise ratio and Pearson correlation.

A second order derivative scheme based on Bregman algorithm class

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Campagna, Rosanna; Crisci, Serena; Cuomo, Salvatore; Galletti, Ardelio; Marcellino, Livia

2016-10-01

The algorithms based on the Bregman iterative regularization are known for efficiently solving convex constraint optimization problems. In this paper, we introduce a second order derivative scheme for the class of Bregman algorithms. Its properties of convergence and stability are investigated by means of numerical evidences. Moreover, we apply the proposed scheme to an isotropic Total Variation (TV) problem arising out of the Magnetic Resonance Image (MRI) denoising. Experimental results confirm that our algorithm has good performance in terms of denoising quality, effectiveness and robustness.

A wavelet-based estimator of the degrees of freedom in denoised fMRI time series for probabilistic testing of functional connectivity and brain graphs.

PubMed

Patel, Ameera X; Bullmore, Edward T

2016-11-15

Connectome mapping using techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has become a focus of systems neuroscience. There remain many statistical challenges in analysis of functional connectivity and network architecture from BOLD fMRI multivariate time series. One key statistic for any time series is its (effective) degrees of freedom, df, which will generally be less than the number of time points (or nominal degrees of freedom, N). If we know the df, then probabilistic inference on other fMRI statistics, such as the correlation between two voxel or regional time series, is feasible. However, we currently lack good estimators of df in fMRI time series, especially after the degrees of freedom of the "raw" data have been modified substantially by denoising algorithms for head movement. Here, we used a wavelet-based method both to denoise fMRI data and to estimate the (effective) df of the denoised process. We show that seed voxel correlations corrected for locally variable df could be tested for false positive connectivity with better control over Type I error and greater specificity of anatomical mapping than probabilistic connectivity maps using the nominal degrees of freedom. We also show that wavelet despiked statistics can be used to estimate all pairwise correlations between a set of regional nodes, assign a P value to each edge, and then iteratively add edges to the graph in order of increasing P. These probabilistically thresholded graphs are likely more robust to regional variation in head movement effects than comparable graphs constructed by thresholding correlations. Finally, we show that time-windowed estimates of df can be used for probabilistic connectivity testing or dynamic network analysis so that apparent changes in the functional connectome are appropriately corrected for the effects of transient noise bursts. Wavelet despiking is both an algorithm for fMRI time series denoising and an estimator of the (effective) df of denoised fMRI time series. Accurate estimation of df offers many potential advantages for probabilistically thresholding functional connectivity and network statistics tested in the context of spatially variant and non-stationary noise. Code for wavelet despiking, seed correlational testing and probabilistic graph construction is freely available to download as part of the BrainWavelet Toolbox at www.brainwavelet.org. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Sparsity-based image monitoring of crystal size distribution during crystallization

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Tao; Huo, Yan; Ma, Cai Y.; Wang, Xue Z.

2017-07-01

To facilitate monitoring crystal size distribution (CSD) during a crystallization process by using an in-situ imaging system, a sparsity-based image analysis method is proposed for real-time implementation. To cope with image degradation arising from in-situ measurement subject to particle motion, solution turbulence, and uneven illumination background in the crystallizer, sparse representation of a real-time captured crystal image is developed based on using an in-situ image dictionary established in advance, such that the noise components in the captured image can be efficiently removed. Subsequently, the edges of a crystal shape in a captured image are determined in terms of the salience information defined from the denoised crystal images. These edges are used to derive a blur kernel for reconstruction of a denoised image. A non-blind deconvolution algorithm is given for the real-time reconstruction. Consequently, image segmentation can be easily performed for evaluation of CSD. The crystal image dictionary and blur kernels are timely updated in terms of the imaging conditions to improve the restoration efficiency. An experimental study on the cooling crystallization of α-type L-glutamic acid (LGA) is shown to demonstrate the effectiveness and merit of the proposed method.

Removal of intensity bias in magnitude spin-echo MRI images by nonlinear diffusion filtering

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Samsonov, Alexei A.; Johnson, Chris R.

2004-05-01

MRI data analysis is routinely done on the magnitude part of complex images. While both real and imaginary image channels contain Gaussian noise, magnitude MRI data are characterized by Rice distribution. However, conventional filtering methods often assume image noise to be zero mean and Gaussian distributed. Estimation of an underlying image using magnitude data produces biased result. The bias may lead to significant image errors, especially in areas of low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The incorporation of the Rice PDF into a noise filtering procedure can significantly complicate the method both algorithmically and computationally. In this paper, we demonstrate that inherent image phase smoothness of spin-echo MRI images could be utilized for separate filtering of real and imaginary complex image channels to achieve unbiased image denoising. The concept is demonstrated with a novel nonlinear diffusion filtering scheme developed for complex image filtering. In our proposed method, the separate diffusion processes are coupled through combined diffusion coefficients determined from the image magnitude. The new method has been validated with simulated and real MRI data. The new method has provided efficient denoising and bias removal in conventional and black-blood angiography MRI images obtained using fast spin echo acquisition protocols.

Research and Implementation of Heart Sound Denoising

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Feng; Wang, Yutai; Wang, Yanxiang

Heart sound is one of the most important signals. However, the process of getting heart sound signal can be interfered with many factors outside. Heart sound is weak electric signal and even weak external noise may lead to the misjudgment of pathological and physiological information in this signal, thus causing the misjudgment of disease diagnosis. As a result, it is a key to remove the noise which is mixed with heart sound. In this paper, a more systematic research and analysis which is involved in heart sound denoising based on matlab has been made. The study of heart sound denoising based on matlab firstly use the powerful image processing function of matlab to transform heart sound signals with noise into the wavelet domain through wavelet transform and decomposition these signals in muli-level. Then for the detail coefficient, soft thresholding is made using wavelet transform thresholding to eliminate noise, so that a signal denoising is significantly improved. The reconstructed signals are gained with stepwise coefficient reconstruction for the processed detail coefficient. Lastly, 50HZ power frequency and 35 Hz mechanical and electrical interference signals are eliminated using a notch filter.

New second order Mumford-Shah model based on Γ-convergence approximation for image processing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Duan, Jinming; Lu, Wenqi; Pan, Zhenkuan; Bai, Li

2016-05-01

In this paper, a second order variational model named the Mumford-Shah total generalized variation (MSTGV) is proposed for simultaneously image denoising and segmentation, which combines the original Γ-convergence approximated Mumford-Shah model with the second order total generalized variation (TGV). For image denoising, the proposed MSTGV can eliminate both the staircase artefact associated with the first order total variation and the edge blurring effect associated with the quadratic H1 regularization or the second order bounded Hessian regularization. For image segmentation, the MSTGV can obtain clear and continuous boundaries of objects in the image. To improve computational efficiency, the implementation of the MSTGV does not directly solve its high order nonlinear partial differential equations and instead exploits the efficient split Bregman algorithm. The algorithm benefits from the fast Fourier transform, analytical generalized soft thresholding equation, and Gauss-Seidel iteration. Extensive experiments are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed model.

An Effective Post-Filtering Framework for 3-D PET Image Denoising Based on Noise and Sensitivity Characteristics

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kim, Ji Hye; Ahn, Il Jun; Nam, Woo Hyun; Ra, Jong Beom

2015-02-01

Positron emission tomography (PET) images usually suffer from a noticeable amount of statistical noise. In order to reduce this noise, a post-filtering process is usually adopted. However, the performance of this approach is limited because the denoising process is mostly performed on the basis of the Gaussian random noise. It has been reported that in a PET image reconstructed by the expectation-maximization (EM), the noise variance of each voxel depends on its mean value, unlike in the case of Gaussian noise. In addition, we observe that the variance also varies with the spatial sensitivity distribution in a PET system, which reflects both the solid angle determined by a given scanner geometry and the attenuation information of a scanned object. Thus, if a post-filtering process based on the Gaussian random noise is applied to PET images without consideration of the noise characteristics along with the spatial sensitivity distribution, the spatially variant non-Gaussian noise cannot be reduced effectively. In the proposed framework, to effectively reduce the noise in PET images reconstructed by the 3-D ordinary Poisson ordered subset EM (3-D OP-OSEM), we first denormalize an image according to the sensitivity of each voxel so that the voxel mean value can represent its statistical properties reliably. Based on our observation that each noisy denormalized voxel has a linear relationship between the mean and variance, we try to convert this non-Gaussian noise image to a Gaussian noise image. We then apply a block matching 4-D algorithm that is optimized for noise reduction of the Gaussian noise image, and reconvert and renormalize the result to obtain a final denoised image. Using simulated phantom data and clinical patient data, we demonstrate that the proposed framework can effectively suppress the noise over the whole region of a PET image while minimizing degradation of the image resolution.

Multichannel blind iterative image restoration.

PubMed

Sroubek, Filip; Flusser, Jan

2003-01-01

Blind image deconvolution is required in many applications of microscopy imaging, remote sensing, and astronomical imaging. Unfortunately in a single-channel framework, serious conceptual and numerical problems are often encountered. Very recently, an eigenvector-based method (EVAM) was proposed for a multichannel framework which determines perfectly convolution masks in a noise-free environment if channel disparity, called co-primeness, is satisfied. We propose a novel iterative algorithm based on recent anisotropic denoising techniques of total variation and a Mumford-Shah functional with the EVAM restoration condition included. A linearization scheme of half-quadratic regularization together with a cell-centered finite difference discretization scheme is used in the algorithm and provides a unified approach to the solution of total variation or Mumford-Shah. The algorithm performs well even on very noisy images and does not require an exact estimation of mask orders. We demonstrate capabilities of the algorithm on synthetic data. Finally, the algorithm is applied to defocused images taken with a digital camera and to data from astronomical ground-based observations of the Sun.

A Morphological Hessian Based Approach for Retinal Blood Vessels Segmentation and Denoising Using Region Based Otsu Thresholding

PubMed Central

BahadarKhan, Khan; A Khaliq, Amir; Shahid, Muhammad

2016-01-01

Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) harm retinal blood vessels in the eye causing visual deficiency. The appearance and structure of blood vessels in retinal images play an essential part in the diagnoses of an eye sicknesses. We proposed a less computational unsupervised automated technique with promising results for detection of retinal vasculature by using morphological hessian based approach and region based Otsu thresholding. Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE) and morphological filters have been used for enhancement and to remove low frequency noise or geometrical objects, respectively. The hessian matrix and eigenvalues approach used has been in a modified form at two different scales to extract wide and thin vessel enhanced images separately. Otsu thresholding has been further applied in a novel way to classify vessel and non-vessel pixels from both enhanced images. Finally, postprocessing steps has been used to eliminate the unwanted region/segment, non-vessel pixels, disease abnormalities and noise, to obtain a final segmented image. The proposed technique has been analyzed on the openly accessible DRIVE (Digital Retinal Images for Vessel Extraction) and STARE (STructured Analysis of the REtina) databases along with the ground truth data that has been precisely marked by the experts. PMID:27441646

(Non-) homomorphic approaches to denoise intensity SAR images with non-local means and stochastic distances

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Penna, Pedro A. A.; Mascarenhas, Nelson D. A.

2018-02-01

The development of new methods to denoise images still attract researchers, who seek to combat the noise with the minimal loss of resolution and details, like edges and fine structures. Many algorithms have the goal to remove additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). However, it is not the only type of noise which interferes in the analysis and interpretation of images. Therefore, it is extremely important to expand the filters capacity to different noise models present in li-terature, for example the multiplicative noise called speckle that is present in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. The state-of-the-art algorithms in remote sensing area work with similarity between patches. This paper aims to develop two approaches using the non local means (NLM), developed for AWGN. In our research, we expanded its capacity for intensity SAR ima-ges speckle. The first approach is grounded on the use of stochastic distances based on the G0 distribution without transforming the data to the logarithm domain, like homomorphic transformation. It takes into account the speckle and backscatter to estimate the parameters necessary to compute the stochastic distances on NLM. The second method uses a priori NLM denoising with a homomorphic transformation and applies the inverse Gamma distribution to estimate the parameters that were used into NLM with stochastic distances. The latter method also presents a new alternative to compute the parameters for the G0 distribution. Finally, this work compares and analyzes the synthetic and real results of the proposed methods with some recent filters of the literature.

Advanced prior modeling for 3D bright field electron tomography

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sreehari, Suhas; Venkatakrishnan, S. V.; Drummy, Lawrence F.; Simmons, Jeffrey P.; Bouman, Charles A.

2015-03-01

Many important imaging problems in material science involve reconstruction of images containing repetitive non-local structures. Model-based iterative reconstruction (MBIR) could in principle exploit such redundancies through the selection of a log prior probability term. However, in practice, determining such a log prior term that accounts for the similarity between distant structures in the image is quite challenging. Much progress has been made in the development of denoising algorithms like non-local means and BM3D, and these are known to successfully capture non-local redundancies in images. But the fact that these denoising operations are not explicitly formulated as cost functions makes it unclear as to how to incorporate them in the MBIR framework. In this paper, we formulate a solution to bright field electron tomography by augmenting the existing bright field MBIR method to incorporate any non-local denoising operator as a prior model. We accomplish this using a framework we call plug-and-play priors that decouples the log likelihood and the log prior probability terms in the MBIR cost function. We specifically use 3D non-local means (NLM) as the prior model in the plug-and-play framework, and showcase high quality tomographic reconstructions of a simulated aluminum spheres dataset, and two real datasets of aluminum spheres and ferritin structures. We observe that streak and smear artifacts are visibly suppressed, and that edges are preserved. Also, we report lower RMSE values compared to the conventional MBIR reconstruction using qGGMRF as the prior model.

Comments on "Image denoising by sparse 3-D transform-domain collaborative filtering".

PubMed

Hou, Yingkun; Zhao, Chunxia; Yang, Deyun; Cheng, Yong

2011-01-01

In order to resolve the problem that the denoising performance has a sharp drop when noise standard deviation reaches 40, proposed to replace the wavelet transform by the DCT. In this comment, we argue that this replacement is unnecessary, and that the problem can be solved by adjusting some numerical parameters. We also present this parameter modification approach here. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed modification achieves better results in terms of both peak signal-to-noise ratio and subjective visual quality than the original method for strong noise.

An l1-TV algorithm for deconvolution with salt and pepper noise

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Wohlberg, Brendt; Rodriguez, Paul

2008-01-01

There has recently been considerable interest in applying Total Variation with an {ell}{sup 1} data fidelity term to the denoising of images subject to salt and pepper noise, but the extension of this formulation to more general problems, such as deconvolution, has received little attention, most probably because most efficient algorithms for {ell}{sup 1}-TV denoising can not handle more general inverse problems. We apply the Iteratively Reweighted Norm algorithm to this problem, and compare performance with an alternative algorithm based on the Mumford-Shah functional.

Fault Detection of a Roller-Bearing System through the EMD of a Wavelet Denoised Signal

PubMed Central

Ahn, Jong-Hyo; Kwak, Dae-Ho; Koh, Bong-Hwan

2014-01-01

This paper investigates fault detection of a roller bearing system using a wavelet denoising scheme and proper orthogonal value (POV) of an intrinsic mode function (IMF) covariance matrix. The IMF of the bearing vibration signal is obtained through empirical mode decomposition (EMD). The signal screening process in the wavelet domain eliminates noise-corrupted portions that may lead to inaccurate prognosis of bearing conditions. We segmented the denoised bearing signal into several intervals, and decomposed each of them into IMFs. The first IMF of each segment is collected to become a covariance matrix for calculating the POV. We show that covariance matrices from healthy and damaged bearings exhibit different POV profiles, which can be a damage-sensitive feature. We also illustrate the conventional approach of feature extraction, of observing the kurtosis value of the measured signal, to compare the functionality of the proposed technique. The study demonstrates the feasibility of wavelet-based de-noising, and shows through laboratory experiments that tracking the proper orthogonal values of the covariance matrix of the IMF can be an effective and reliable measure for monitoring bearing fault. PMID:25196008

Online Denoising Based on the Second-Order Adaptive Statistics Model.

PubMed

Yi, Sheng-Lun; Jin, Xue-Bo; Su, Ting-Li; Tang, Zhen-Yun; Wang, Fa-Fa; Xiang, Na; Kong, Jian-Lei

2017-07-20

Online denoising is motivated by real-time applications in the industrial process, where the data must be utilizable soon after it is collected. Since the noise in practical process is usually colored, it is quite a challenge for denoising techniques. In this paper, a novel online denoising method was proposed to achieve the processing of the practical measurement data with colored noise, and the characteristics of the colored noise were considered in the dynamic model via an adaptive parameter. The proposed method consists of two parts within a closed loop: the first one is to estimate the system state based on the second-order adaptive statistics model and the other is to update the adaptive parameter in the model using the Yule-Walker algorithm. Specifically, the state estimation process was implemented via the Kalman filter in a recursive way, and the online purpose was therefore attained. Experimental data in a reinforced concrete structure test was used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Results show the proposed method not only dealt with the signals with colored noise, but also achieved a tradeoff between efficiency and accuracy.

Estimation of signal-dependent noise level function in transform domain via a sparse recovery model.

PubMed

Yang, Jingyu; Gan, Ziqiao; Wu, Zhaoyang; Hou, Chunping

2015-05-01

This paper proposes a novel algorithm to estimate the noise level function (NLF) of signal-dependent noise (SDN) from a single image based on the sparse representation of NLFs. Noise level samples are estimated from the high-frequency discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients of nonlocal-grouped low-variation image patches. Then, an NLF recovery model based on the sparse representation of NLFs under a trained basis is constructed to recover NLF from the incomplete noise level samples. Confidence levels of the NLF samples are incorporated into the proposed model to promote reliable samples and weaken unreliable ones. We investigate the behavior of the estimation performance with respect to the block size, sampling rate, and confidence weighting. Simulation results on synthetic noisy images show that our method outperforms existing state-of-the-art schemes. The proposed method is evaluated on real noisy images captured by three types of commodity imaging devices, and shows consistently excellent SDN estimation performance. The estimated NLFs are incorporated into two well-known denoising schemes, nonlocal means and BM3D, and show significant improvements in denoising SDN-polluted images.

Non-stationary noise estimation using dictionary learning and Gaussian mixture models

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hughes, James M.; Rockmore, Daniel N.; Wang, Yang

2014-02-01

Stationarity of the noise distribution is a common assumption in image processing. This assumption greatly simplifies denoising estimators and other model parameters and consequently assuming stationarity is often a matter of convenience rather than an accurate model of noise characteristics. The problematic nature of this assumption is exacerbated in real-world contexts, where noise is often highly non-stationary and can possess time- and space-varying characteristics. Regardless of model complexity, estimating the parameters of noise dis- tributions in digital images is a difficult task, and estimates are often based on heuristic assumptions. Recently, sparse Bayesian dictionary learning methods were shown to produce accurate estimates of the level of additive white Gaussian noise in images with minimal assumptions. We show that a similar model is capable of accu- rately modeling certain kinds of non-stationary noise processes, allowing for space-varying noise in images to be estimated, detected, and removed. We apply this modeling concept to several types of non-stationary noise and demonstrate the model's effectiveness on real-world problems, including denoising and segmentation of images according to noise characteristics, which has applications in image forensics.

Wavelet denoising of multiframe optical coherence tomography data

PubMed Central

Mayer, Markus A.; Borsdorf, Anja; Wagner, Martin; Hornegger, Joachim; Mardin, Christian Y.; Tornow, Ralf P.

2012-01-01

We introduce a novel speckle noise reduction algorithm for OCT images. Contrary to present approaches, the algorithm does not rely on simple averaging of multiple image frames or denoising on the final averaged image. Instead it uses wavelet decompositions of the single frames for a local noise and structure estimation. Based on this analysis, the wavelet detail coefficients are weighted, averaged and reconstructed. At a signal-to-noise gain at about 100% we observe only a minor sharpness decrease, as measured by a full-width-half-maximum reduction of 10.5%. While a similar signal-to-noise gain would require averaging of 29 frames, we achieve this result using only 8 frames as input to the algorithm. A possible application of the proposed algorithm is preprocessing in retinal structure segmentation algorithms, to allow a better differentiation between real tissue information and unwanted speckle noise. PMID:22435103

Wavelet denoising of multiframe optical coherence tomography data.

PubMed

Mayer, Markus A; Borsdorf, Anja; Wagner, Martin; Hornegger, Joachim; Mardin, Christian Y; Tornow, Ralf P

2012-03-01

We introduce a novel speckle noise reduction algorithm for OCT images. Contrary to present approaches, the algorithm does not rely on simple averaging of multiple image frames or denoising on the final averaged image. Instead it uses wavelet decompositions of the single frames for a local noise and structure estimation. Based on this analysis, the wavelet detail coefficients are weighted, averaged and reconstructed. At a signal-to-noise gain at about 100% we observe only a minor sharpness decrease, as measured by a full-width-half-maximum reduction of 10.5%. While a similar signal-to-noise gain would require averaging of 29 frames, we achieve this result using only 8 frames as input to the algorithm. A possible application of the proposed algorithm is preprocessing in retinal structure segmentation algorithms, to allow a better differentiation between real tissue information and unwanted speckle noise.

Platform for Post-Processing Waveform-Based NDE

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Roth, Don J.

2010-01-01

Signal- and image-processing methods are commonly needed to extract information from the waves, improve resolution of, and highlight defects in an image. Since some similarity exists for all waveform-based nondestructive evaluation (NDE) methods, it would seem that a common software platform containing multiple signal- and image-processing techniques to process the waveforms and images makes sense where multiple techniques, scientists, engineers, and organizations are involved. NDE Wave & Image Processor Version 2.0 software provides a single, integrated signal- and image-processing and analysis environment for total NDE data processing and analysis. It brings some of the most useful algorithms developed for NDE over the past 20 years into a commercial-grade product. The software can import signal/spectroscopic data, image data, and image series data. This software offers the user hundreds of basic and advanced signal- and image-processing capabilities including esoteric 1D and 2D wavelet-based de-noising, de-trending, and filtering. Batch processing is included for signal- and image-processing capability so that an optimized sequence of processing operations can be applied to entire folders of signals, spectra, and images. Additionally, an extensive interactive model-based curve-fitting facility has been included to allow fitting of spectroscopy data such as from Raman spectroscopy. An extensive joint-time frequency module is included for analysis of non-stationary or transient data such as that from acoustic emission, vibration, or earthquake data.

Wavelet-based fMRI analysis: 3-D denoising, signal separation, and validation metrics

PubMed Central

Khullar, Siddharth; Michael, Andrew; Correa, Nicolle; Adali, Tulay; Baum, Stefi A.; Calhoun, Vince D.

2010-01-01

We present a novel integrated wavelet-domain based framework (w-ICA) for 3-D de-noising functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data followed by source separation analysis using independent component analysis (ICA) in the wavelet domain. We propose the idea of a 3-D wavelet-based multi-directional de-noising scheme where each volume in a 4-D fMRI data set is sub-sampled using the axial, sagittal and coronal geometries to obtain three different slice-by-slice representations of the same data. The filtered intensity value of an arbitrary voxel is computed as an expected value of the de-noised wavelet coefficients corresponding to the three viewing geometries for each sub-band. This results in a robust set of de-noised wavelet coefficients for each voxel. Given the decorrelated nature of these de-noised wavelet coefficients; it is possible to obtain more accurate source estimates using ICA in the wavelet domain. The contributions of this work can be realized as two modules. First, the analysis module where we combine a new 3-D wavelet denoising approach with better signal separation properties of ICA in the wavelet domain, to yield an activation component that corresponds closely to the true underlying signal and is maximally independent with respect to other components. Second, we propose and describe two novel shape metrics for post-ICA comparisons between activation regions obtained through different frameworks. We verified our method using simulated as well as real fMRI data and compared our results against the conventional scheme (Gaussian smoothing + spatial ICA: s-ICA). The results show significant improvements based on two important features: (1) preservation of shape of the activation region (shape metrics) and (2) receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. It was observed that the proposed framework was able to preserve the actual activation shape in a consistent manner even for very high noise levels in addition to significant reduction in false positives voxels. PMID:21034833

Evaluation of Wavelet Denoising Methods for Small-Scale Joint Roughness Estimation Using Terrestrial Laser Scanning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bitenc, M.; Kieffer, D. S.; Khoshelham, K.

2015-08-01

The precision of Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) data depends mainly on the inherent random range error, which hinders extraction of small details from TLS measurements. New post processing algorithms have been developed that reduce or eliminate the noise and therefore enable modelling details at a smaller scale than one would traditionally expect. The aim of this research is to find the optimum denoising method such that the corrected TLS data provides a reliable estimation of small-scale rock joint roughness. Two wavelet-based denoising methods are considered, namely Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and Stationary Wavelet Transform (SWT), in combination with different thresholding procedures. The question is, which technique provides a more accurate roughness estimates considering (i) wavelet transform (SWT or DWT), (ii) thresholding method (fixed-form or penalised low) and (iii) thresholding mode (soft or hard). The performance of denoising methods is tested by two analyses, namely method noise and method sensitivity to noise. The reference data are precise Advanced TOpometric Sensor (ATOS) measurements obtained on 20 × 30 cm rock joint sample, which are for the second analysis corrupted by different levels of noise. With such a controlled noise level experiments it is possible to evaluate the methods' performance for different amounts of noise, which might be present in TLS data. Qualitative visual checks of denoised surfaces and quantitative parameters such as grid height and roughness are considered in a comparative analysis of denoising methods. Results indicate that the preferred method for realistic roughness estimation is DWT with penalised low hard thresholding.

Comparison of Image Restoration Methods for Lunar Epithermal Neutron Emission Mapping

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

McClanahan, T. P.; Ivatury, V.; Milikh, G.; Nandikotkur, G.; Puetter, R. C.; Sagdeev, R. Z.; Usikov, D.; Mitrofanov, I. G.

2009-01-01

Orbital measurements of neutrons by the Lunar Exploring Neutron Detector (LEND) onboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter are being used to quantify the spatial distribution of near surface hydrogen (H). Inferred H concentration maps have low signal-to-noise (SN) and image restoration (IR) techniques are being studied to enhance results. A single-blind. two-phase study is described in which four teams of researchers independently developed image restoration techniques optimized for LEND data. Synthetic lunar epithermal neutron emission maps were derived from LEND simulations. These data were used as ground truth to determine the relative quantitative performance of the IR methods vs. a default denoising (smoothing) technique. We review and used factors influencing orbital remote sensing of neutrons emitted from the lunar surface to develop a database of synthetic "true" maps for performance evaluation. A prior independent training phase was implemented for each technique to assure methods were optimized before the blind trial. Method performance was determined using several regional root-mean-square error metrics specific to epithermal signals of interest. Results indicate unbiased IR methods realize only small signal gains in most of the tested metrics. This suggests other physically based modeling assumptions are required to produce appreciable signal gains in similar low SN IR applications.

Seismic data fusion anomaly detection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Harrity, Kyle; Blasch, Erik; Alford, Mark; Ezekiel, Soundararajan; Ferris, David

2014-06-01

Detecting anomalies in non-stationary signals has valuable applications in many fields including medicine and meteorology. These include uses such as identifying possible heart conditions from an Electrocardiography (ECG) signals or predicting earthquakes via seismographic data. Over the many choices of anomaly detection algorithms, it is important to compare possible methods. In this paper, we examine and compare two approaches to anomaly detection and see how data fusion methods may improve performance. The first approach involves using an artificial neural network (ANN) to detect anomalies in a wavelet de-noised signal. The other method uses a perspective neural network (PNN) to analyze an arbitrary number of "perspectives" or transformations of the observed signal for anomalies. Possible perspectives may include wavelet de-noising, Fourier transform, peak-filtering, etc.. In order to evaluate these techniques via signal fusion metrics, we must apply signal preprocessing techniques such as de-noising methods to the original signal and then use a neural network to find anomalies in the generated signal. From this secondary result it is possible to use data fusion techniques that can be evaluated via existing data fusion metrics for single and multiple perspectives. The result will show which anomaly detection method, according to the metrics, is better suited overall for anomaly detection applications. The method used in this study could be applied to compare other signal processing algorithms.

A Combined Methodology to Eliminate Artifacts in Multichannel Electrogastrogram Based on Independent Component Analysis and Ensemble Empirical Mode Decomposition.

PubMed

Sengottuvel, S; Khan, Pathan Fayaz; Mariyappa, N; Patel, Rajesh; Saipriya, S; Gireesan, K

2018-06-01

Cutaneous measurements of electrogastrogram (EGG) signals are heavily contaminated by artifacts due to cardiac activity, breathing, motion artifacts, and electrode drifts whose effective elimination remains an open problem. A common methodology is proposed by combining independent component analysis (ICA) and ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) to denoise gastric slow-wave signals in multichannel EGG data. Sixteen electrodes are fixed over the upper abdomen to measure the EGG signals under three gastric conditions, namely, preprandial, postprandial immediately, and postprandial 2 h after food for three healthy subjects and a subject with a gastric disorder. Instantaneous frequencies of intrinsic mode functions that are obtained by applying the EEMD technique are analyzed to individually identify and remove each of the artifacts. A critical investigation on the proposed ICA-EEMD method reveals its ability to provide a higher attenuation of artifacts and lower distortion than those obtained by the ICA-EMD method and conventional techniques, like bandpass and adaptive filtering. Characteristic changes in the slow-wave frequencies across the three gastric conditions could be determined from the denoised signals for all the cases. The results therefore encourage the use of the EEMD-based technique for denoising gastric signals to be used in clinical practice.

Semisupervised learning using denoising autoencoders for brain lesion detection and segmentation.

PubMed

Alex, Varghese; Vaidhya, Kiran; Thirunavukkarasu, Subramaniam; Kesavadas, Chandrasekharan; Krishnamurthi, Ganapathy

2017-10-01

The work explores the use of denoising autoencoders (DAEs) for brain lesion detection, segmentation, and false-positive reduction. Stacked denoising autoencoders (SDAEs) were pretrained using a large number of unlabeled patient volumes and fine-tuned with patches drawn from a limited number of patients ([Formula: see text], 40, 65). The results show negligible loss in performance even when SDAE was fine-tuned using 20 labeled patients. Low grade glioma (LGG) segmentation was achieved using a transfer learning approach in which a network pretrained with high grade glioma data was fine-tuned using LGG image patches. The networks were also shown to generalize well and provide good segmentation on unseen BraTS 2013 and BraTS 2015 test data. The manuscript also includes the use of a single layer DAE, referred to as novelty detector (ND). ND was trained to accurately reconstruct nonlesion patches. The reconstruction error maps of test data were used to localize lesions. The error maps were shown to assign unique error distributions to various constituents of the glioma, enabling localization. The ND learns the nonlesion brain accurately as it was also shown to provide good segmentation performance on ischemic brain lesions in images from a different database.

A complete passive blind image copy-move forensics scheme based on compound statistics features.

PubMed

Peng, Fei; Nie, Yun-ying; Long, Min

2011-10-10

Since most sensor pattern noise based image copy-move forensics methods require a known reference sensor pattern noise, it generally results in non-blinded passive forensics, which significantly confines the application circumstances. In view of this, a novel passive-blind image copy-move forensics scheme is proposed in this paper. Firstly, a color image is transformed into a grayscale one, and wavelet transform based de-noising filter is used to extract the sensor pattern noise, then the variance of the pattern noise, the signal noise ratio between the de-noised image and the pattern noise, the information entropy and the average energy gradient of the original grayscale image are chosen as features, non-overlapping sliding window operations are done to the images to divide them into different sub-blocks. Finally, the tampered areas are detected by analyzing the correlation of the features between the sub-blocks and the whole image. Experimental results and analysis show that the proposed scheme is completely passive-blind, has a good detection rate, and is robust against JPEG compression, noise, rotation, scaling and blurring. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Improving the signal analysis for in vivo photoacoustic flow cytometry

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Niu, Zhenyu; Yang, Ping; Wei, Dan; Tang, Shuo; Wei, Xunbin

2015-03-01

At early stage of cancer, a small number of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) appear in the blood circulation. Thus, early detection of malignant circulating tumor cells has great significance for timely treatment to reduce the cancer death rate. We have developed an in vivo photoacoustic flow cytometry (PAFC) to monitor the metastatic process of CTCs and record the signals from target cells. Information of target cells which is helpful to the early therapy would be obtained through analyzing and processing the signals. The raw signal detected from target cells often contains some noise caused by electronic devices, such as background noise and thermal noise. We choose the Wavelet denoising method to effectively distinguish the target signal from background noise. Processing in time domain and frequency domain would be combined to analyze the signal after denoising. This algorithm contains time domain filter and frequency transformation. The frequency spectrum image of the signal contains distinctive features that can be used to analyze the property of target cells or particles. The PAFC technique can detect signals from circulating tumor cells or other particles. The processing methods have a great potential for analyzing signals accurately and rapidly.

3D Data Denoising via Nonlocal Means Filter by Using Parallel GPU Strategies

PubMed Central

Cuomo, Salvatore; De Michele, Pasquale; Piccialli, Francesco

2014-01-01

Nonlocal Means (NLM) algorithm is widely considered as a state-of-the-art denoising filter in many research fields. Its high computational complexity leads researchers to the development of parallel programming approaches and the use of massively parallel architectures such as the GPUs. In the recent years, the GPU devices had led to achieving reasonable running times by filtering, slice-by-slice, and 3D datasets with a 2D NLM algorithm. In our approach we design and implement a fully 3D NonLocal Means parallel approach, adopting different algorithm mapping strategies on GPU architecture and multi-GPU framework, in order to demonstrate its high applicability and scalability. The experimental results we obtained encourage the usability of our approach in a large spectrum of applicative scenarios such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or video sequence denoising. PMID:25045397

A Small Leak Detection Method Based on VMD Adaptive De-Noising and Ambiguity Correlation Classification Intended for Natural Gas Pipelines.

PubMed

Xiao, Qiyang; Li, Jian; Bai, Zhiliang; Sun, Jiedi; Zhou, Nan; Zeng, Zhoumo

2016-12-13

In this study, a small leak detection method based on variational mode decomposition (VMD) and ambiguity correlation classification (ACC) is proposed. The signals acquired from sensors were decomposed using the VMD, and numerous components were obtained. According to the probability density function (PDF), an adaptive de-noising algorithm based on VMD is proposed for noise component processing and de-noised components reconstruction. Furthermore, the ambiguity function image was employed for analysis of the reconstructed signals. Based on the correlation coefficient, ACC is proposed to detect the small leak of pipeline. The analysis of pipeline leakage signals, using 1 mm and 2 mm leaks, has shown that proposed detection method can detect a small leak accurately and effectively. Moreover, the experimental results have shown that the proposed method achieved better performances than support vector machine (SVM) and back propagation neural network (BP) methods.

A Small Leak Detection Method Based on VMD Adaptive De-Noising and Ambiguity Correlation Classification Intended for Natural Gas Pipelines

PubMed Central

Xiao, Qiyang; Li, Jian; Bai, Zhiliang; Sun, Jiedi; Zhou, Nan; Zeng, Zhoumo

2016-01-01

In this study, a small leak detection method based on variational mode decomposition (VMD) and ambiguity correlation classification (ACC) is proposed. The signals acquired from sensors were decomposed using the VMD, and numerous components were obtained. According to the probability density function (PDF), an adaptive de-noising algorithm based on VMD is proposed for noise component processing and de-noised components reconstruction. Furthermore, the ambiguity function image was employed for analysis of the reconstructed signals. Based on the correlation coefficient, ACC is proposed to detect the small leak of pipeline. The analysis of pipeline leakage signals, using 1 mm and 2 mm leaks, has shown that proposed detection method can detect a small leak accurately and effectively. Moreover, the experimental results have shown that the proposed method achieved better performances than support vector machine (SVM) and back propagation neural network (BP) methods. PMID:27983577

Cubesat-Derived Detection of Seagrasses Using Planet Imagery Following Unmixing-Based Denoising: is Small the Next Big?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Traganos, D.; Cerra, D.; Reinartz, P.

2017-05-01

Seagrasses are one of the most productive and widespread yet threatened coastal ecosystems on Earth. Despite their importance, they are declining due to various threats, which are mainly anthropogenic. Lack of data on their distribution hinders any effort to rectify this decline through effective detection, mapping and monitoring. Remote sensing can mitigate this data gap by allowing retrospective quantitative assessment of seagrass beds over large and remote areas. In this paper, we evaluate the quantitative application of Planet high resolution imagery for the detection of seagrasses in the Thermaikos Gulf, NW Aegean Sea, Greece. The low Signal-to-noise Ratio (SNR), which characterizes spectral bands at shorter wavelengths, prompts the application of the Unmixing-based denoising (UBD) as a pre-processing step for seagrass detection. A total of 15 spectral-temporal patterns is extracted from a Planet image time series to restore the corrupted blue and green band in the processed Planet image. Subsequently, we implement Lyzenga's empirical water column correction and Support Vector Machines (SVM) to evaluate quantitative benefits of denoising. Denoising aids detection of Posidonia oceanica seagrass species by increasing its producer and user accuracy by 31.7 % and 10.4 %, correspondingly, with a respective increase in its Kappa value from 0.3 to 0.48. In the near future, our objective is to improve accuracies in seagrass detection by applying more sophisticated, analytical water column correction algorithms to Planet imagery, developing time- and cost-effective monitoring of seagrass distribution that will enable in turn the effective management and conservation of these highly valuable and productive ecosystems.

Tomographic reconstruction of tokamak plasma light emission using wavelet-vaguelette decomposition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schneider, Kai; Nguyen van Yen, Romain; Fedorczak, Nicolas; Brochard, Frederic; Bonhomme, Gerard; Farge, Marie; Monier-Garbet, Pascale

2012-10-01

Images acquired by cameras installed in tokamaks are difficult to interpret because the three-dimensional structure of the plasma is flattened in a non-trivial way. Nevertheless, taking advantage of the slow variation of the fluctuations along magnetic field lines, the optical transformation may be approximated by a generalized Abel transform, for which we proposed in Nguyen van yen et al., Nucl. Fus., 52 (2012) 013005, an inversion technique based on the wavelet-vaguelette decomposition. After validation of the new method using an academic test case and numerical data obtained with the Tokam 2D code, we present an application to an experimental movie obtained in the tokamak Tore Supra. A comparison with a classical regularization technique for ill-posed inverse problems, the singular value decomposition, allows us to assess the efficiency. The superiority of the wavelet-vaguelette technique is reflected in preserving local features, such as blobs and fronts, in the denoised emissivity map.

The Xanadu Annex on Titan Denoised

NASA Image and Video Library

2016-09-07

This synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) image was obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on July 25, 2016, during its 'T-121' pass over Titan's southern latitudes. The improved contrast provided by the denoising algorithm helps river channels (at bottom and upper left) stand out, as well as the crater-like feature at left. The image shows an area nicknamed the "Xanadu annex" by members of the Cassini radar team, earlier in the mission. This area had not been imaged by Cassini's radar until now, but measurements of its brightness temperature from Cassini's microwave radiometer were quite similar to that of the large region on Titan named Xanadu. Cassini's radiometer is essentially a very sensitive thermometer, and brightness temperature is a measure of the intensity of microwave radiation received from a feature by the instrument. Radar team members predicted at the time that, if this area were ever imaged, it would be similar in appearance to Xanadu, which lies just to the north. That earlier hunch appears to have been borne out, as features in this scene bear a strong similarity to the mountainous terrains Cassini's radar has imaged in Xanadu. Xanadu -- and now perhaps its annex -- remains something of a mystery. First imaged in 1994 by the Hubble Space Telescope (just three years before Cassini's launch from Earth), Xanadu was the first surface feature to be recognized on Titan. Once thought to be a raised plateau, the region is now understood to be slightly tilted, but not higher than, the darker surrounding regions. It blocks the formation of sand dunes, which otherwise extend all the way around Titan at its equator. The image was taken by the Cassini Synthetic Aperture radar (SAR) on July 25, 2016 during the mission's 122nd targeted Titan encounter. The image has been modified by the denoising method described in A. Lucas, JGR:Planets (2014). http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA20714

Image registration for a UV-Visible dual-band imaging system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Tao; Yuan, Shuang; Li, Jianping; Xing, Sheng; Zhang, Honglong; Dong, Yuming; Chen, Liangpei; Liu, Peng; Jiao, Guohua

2018-06-01

The detection of corona discharge is an effective way for early fault diagnosis of power equipment. UV-Visible dual-band imaging can detect and locate corona discharge spot at all-weather condition. In this study, we introduce an image registration protocol for this dual-band imaging system. The protocol consists of UV image denoising and affine transformation model establishment. We report the algorithm details of UV image preprocessing, affine transformation model establishment and relevant experiments for verification of their feasibility. The denoising algorithm was based on a correlation operation between raw UV images, a continuous mask and the transformation model was established by using corner feature and a statistical method. Finally, an image fusion test was carried out to verify the accuracy of affine transformation model. It has proved the average position displacement error between corona discharge and equipment fault at different distances in a 2.5m-20 m range are 1.34 mm and 1.92 mm in the horizontal and vertical directions, respectively, which are precise enough for most industrial applications. The resultant protocol is not only expected to improve the efficiency and accuracy of such imaging system for locating corona discharge spot, but also supposed to provide a more generalized reference for the calibration of various dual-band imaging systems in practice.

Wavelets in medical imaging

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zahra, Noor e.; Sevindir, Hulya Kodal; Aslan, Zafer; Siddiqi, A. H.

2012-07-01

The aim of this study is to provide emerging applications of wavelet methods to medical signals and images, such as electrocardiogram, electroencephalogram, functional magnetic resonance imaging, computer tomography, X-ray and mammography. Interpretation of these signals and images are quite important. Nowadays wavelet methods have a significant impact on the science of medical imaging and the diagnosis of disease and screening protocols. Based on our initial investigations, future directions include neurosurgical planning and improved assessment of risk for individual patients, improved assessment and strategies for the treatment of chronic pain, improved seizure localization, and improved understanding of the physiology of neurological disorders. We look ahead to these and other emerging applications as the benefits of this technology become incorporated into current and future patient care. In this chapter by applying Fourier transform and wavelet transform, analysis and denoising of one of the important biomedical signals like EEG is carried out. The presence of rhythm, template matching, and correlation is discussed by various method. Energy of EEG signal is used to detect seizure in an epileptic patient. We have also performed denoising of EEG signals by SWT.

A Shearlet-based algorithm for quantum noise removal in low-dose CT images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Aguan; Jiang, Huiqin; Ma, Ling; Liu, Yumin; Yang, Xiaopeng

2016-03-01

Low-dose CT (LDCT) scanning is a potential way to reduce the radiation exposure of X-ray in the population. It is necessary to improve the quality of low-dose CT images. In this paper, we propose an effective algorithm for quantum noise removal in LDCT images using shearlet transform. Because the quantum noise can be simulated by Poisson process, we first transform the quantum noise by using anscombe variance stabilizing transform (VST), producing an approximately Gaussian noise with unitary variance. Second, the non-noise shearlet coefficients are obtained by adaptive hard-threshold processing in shearlet domain. Third, we reconstruct the de-noised image using the inverse shearlet transform. Finally, an anscombe inverse transform is applied to the de-noised image, which can produce the improved image. The main contribution is to combine the anscombe VST with the shearlet transform. By this way, edge coefficients and noise coefficients can be separated from high frequency sub-bands effectively. A number of experiments are performed over some LDCT images by using the proposed method. Both quantitative and visual results show that the proposed method can effectively reduce the quantum noise while enhancing the subtle details. It has certain value in clinical application.

Computational segmentation of collagen fibers from second-harmonic generation images of breast cancer

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bredfeldt, Jeremy S.; Liu, Yuming; Pehlke, Carolyn A.; Conklin, Matthew W.; Szulczewski, Joseph M.; Inman, David R.; Keely, Patricia J.; Nowak, Robert D.; Mackie, Thomas R.; Eliceiri, Kevin W.

2014-01-01

Second-harmonic generation (SHG) imaging can help reveal interactions between collagen fibers and cancer cells. Quantitative analysis of SHG images of collagen fibers is challenged by the heterogeneity of collagen structures and low signal-to-noise ratio often found while imaging collagen in tissue. The role of collagen in breast cancer progression can be assessed post acquisition via enhanced computation. To facilitate this, we have implemented and evaluated four algorithms for extracting fiber information, such as number, length, and curvature, from a variety of SHG images of collagen in breast tissue. The image-processing algorithms included a Gaussian filter, SPIRAL-TV filter, Tubeness filter, and curvelet-denoising filter. Fibers are then extracted using an automated tracking algorithm called fiber extraction (FIRE). We evaluated the algorithm performance by comparing length, angle and position of the automatically extracted fibers with those of manually extracted fibers in twenty-five SHG images of breast cancer. We found that the curvelet-denoising filter followed by FIRE, a process we call CT-FIRE, outperforms the other algorithms under investigation. CT-FIRE was then successfully applied to track collagen fiber shape changes over time in an in vivo mouse model for breast cancer.

A discrete polar Stockwell transform for enhanced characterization of tissue structure using MRI.

PubMed

Pridham, Glen; Steenwijk, Martijn D; Geurts, Jeroen J G; Zhang, Yunyan

2018-05-02

The purpose of this study was to present an effective algorithm for computing the discrete polar Stockwell transform (PST), investigate its unique multiscale and multi-orientation features, and explore potentially new applications including denoising and tissue segmentation. We investigated PST responses using both synthetic and MR images. Moreover, we compared the features of PST with both Gabor and Morlet wavelet transforms, and compared the PST with two wavelet approaches for denoising using MRI. Using a synthetic image, we also tested the edge effect of PST through signal-padding. Then, we constructed a partially supervised classifier using radial, marginal PST spectra of T2-weighted MRI, acquired from postmortem brains with multiple sclerosis. The classification involved three histology-verified tissue types: normal appearing white matter (NAWM), lesion, or other, along with 5-fold cross-validation. The PST generated a series of images with varying orientations or rotation-invariant scales. Radial frequencies highlighted image structures of different size, and angular frequencies enhanced structures by orientation. Signal-padding helped suppress boundary artifacts but required attention to incidental artifacts. In comparison, the Gabor transform produced more redundant images and the wavelet spectra appeared less spatially smooth than the PST. In addition, the PST demonstrated lower root-mean-square errors than other transforms in denoising and achieved a 93% accuracy for NAWM pixels (296/317), and 88% accuracy for lesion pixels (165/188) in MRI segmentation. The PST is a unique local spectral density-assessing tool which is sensitive to both structure orientations and scales. This may facilitate multiple new applications including advanced characterization of tissue structure in standard MRI. © 2018 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

A sparsity-based iterative algorithm for reconstruction of micro-CT images from highly undersampled projection datasets obtained with a synchrotron X-ray source

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Melli, S. Ali; Wahid, Khan A.; Babyn, Paul; Cooper, David M. L.; Gopi, Varun P.

2016-12-01

Synchrotron X-ray Micro Computed Tomography (Micro-CT) is an imaging technique which is increasingly used for non-invasive in vivo preclinical imaging. However, it often requires a large number of projections from many different angles to reconstruct high-quality images leading to significantly high radiation doses and long scan times. To utilize this imaging technique further for in vivo imaging, we need to design reconstruction algorithms that reduce the radiation dose and scan time without reduction of reconstructed image quality. This research is focused on using a combination of gradient-based Douglas-Rachford splitting and discrete wavelet packet shrinkage image denoising methods to design an algorithm for reconstruction of large-scale reduced-view synchrotron Micro-CT images with acceptable quality metrics. These quality metrics are computed by comparing the reconstructed images with a high-dose reference image reconstructed from 1800 equally spaced projections spanning 180°. Visual and quantitative-based performance assessment of a synthetic head phantom and a femoral cortical bone sample imaged in the biomedical imaging and therapy bending magnet beamline at the Canadian Light Source demonstrates that the proposed algorithm is superior to the existing reconstruction algorithms. Using the proposed reconstruction algorithm to reduce the number of projections in synchrotron Micro-CT is an effective way to reduce the overall radiation dose and scan time which improves in vivo imaging protocols.

Sparse Representation for Color Image Restoration (PREPRINT)

DTIC Science & Technology

2006-10-01

as a universal denoiser of images, which learns the posterior from the given image in a way inspired by the Lempel - Ziv universal compression ...such as images, admit a sparse decomposition over a redundant dictionary leads to efficient algorithms for handling such sources of data . In...describe the data source. Such a model becomes paramount when developing algorithms for processing these signals. In this context, Markov-Random-Field

Example-based human motion denoising.

PubMed

Lou, Hui; Chai, Jinxiang

2010-01-01

With the proliferation of motion capture data, interest in removing noise and outliers from motion capture data has increased. In this paper, we introduce an efficient human motion denoising technique for the simultaneous removal of noise and outliers from input human motion data. The key idea of our approach is to learn a series of filter bases from precaptured motion data and use them along with robust statistics techniques to filter noisy motion data. Mathematically, we formulate the motion denoising process in a nonlinear optimization framework. The objective function measures the distance between the noisy input and the filtered motion in addition to how well the filtered motion preserves spatial-temporal patterns embedded in captured human motion data. Optimizing the objective function produces an optimal filtered motion that keeps spatial-temporal patterns in captured motion data. We also extend the algorithm to fill in the missing values in input motion data. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our system by experimenting with both real and simulated motion data. We also show the superior performance of our algorithm by comparing it with three baseline algorithms and to those in state-of-art motion capture data processing software such as Vicon Blade.

A Physics-Based Deep Learning Approach to Shadow Invariant Representations of Hyperspectral Images.

PubMed

Windrim, Lloyd; Ramakrishnan, Rishi; Melkumyan, Arman; Murphy, Richard J

2018-02-01

This paper proposes the Relit Spectral Angle-Stacked Autoencoder, a novel unsupervised feature learning approach for mapping pixel reflectances to illumination invariant encodings. This work extends the Spectral Angle-Stacked Autoencoder so that it can learn a shadow-invariant mapping. The method is inspired by a deep learning technique, Denoising Autoencoders, with the incorporation of a physics-based model for illumination such that the algorithm learns a shadow invariant mapping without the need for any labelled training data, additional sensors, a priori knowledge of the scene or the assumption of Planckian illumination. The method is evaluated using datasets captured from several different cameras, with experiments to demonstrate the illumination invariance of the features and how they can be used practically to improve the performance of high-level perception algorithms that operate on images acquired outdoors.

Joint denoising and distortion correction of atomic scale scanning transmission electron microscopy images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Berkels, Benjamin; Wirth, Benedikt

2017-09-01

Nowadays, modern electron microscopes deliver images at atomic scale. The precise atomic structure encodes information about material properties. Thus, an important ingredient in the image analysis is to locate the centers of the atoms shown in micrographs as precisely as possible. Here, we consider scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), which acquires data in a rastering pattern, pixel by pixel. Due to this rastering combined with the magnification to atomic scale, movements of the specimen even at the nanometer scale lead to random image distortions that make precise atom localization difficult. Given a series of STEM images, we derive a Bayesian method that jointly estimates the distortion in each image and reconstructs the underlying atomic grid of the material by fitting the atom bumps with suitable bump functions. The resulting highly non-convex minimization problems are solved numerically with a trust region approach. Existence of minimizers and the model behavior for faster and faster rastering are investigated using variational techniques. The performance of the method is finally evaluated on both synthetic and real experimental data.

Efficiency analysis for 3D filtering of multichannel images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kozhemiakin, Ruslan A.; Rubel, Oleksii; Abramov, Sergey K.; Lukin, Vladimir V.; Vozel, Benoit; Chehdi, Kacem

2016-10-01

Modern remote sensing systems basically acquire images that are multichannel (dual- or multi-polarization, multi- and hyperspectral) where noise, usually with different characteristics, is present in all components. If noise is intensive, it is desirable to remove (suppress) it before applying methods of image classification, interpreting, and information extraction. This can be done using one of two approaches - by component-wise or by vectorial (3D) filtering. The second approach has shown itself to have higher efficiency if there is essential correlation between multichannel image components as this often happens for multichannel remote sensing data of different origin. Within the class of 3D filtering techniques, there are many possibilities and variations. In this paper, we consider filtering based on discrete cosine transform (DCT) and pay attention to two aspects of processing. First, we study in detail what changes in DCT coefficient statistics take place for 3D denoising compared to component-wise processing. Second, we analyze how selection of component images united into 3D data array influences efficiency of filtering and can the observed tendencies be exploited in processing of images with rather large number of channels.

A robust indicator based on singular value decomposition for flaw feature detection from noisy ultrasonic signals

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cui, Ximing; Wang, Zhe; Kang, Yihua; Pu, Haiming; Deng, Zhiyang

2018-05-01

Singular value decomposition (SVD) has been proven to be an effective de-noising tool for flaw echo signal feature detection in ultrasonic non-destructive evaluation (NDE). However, the uncertainty in the arbitrary manner of the selection of an effective singular value weakens the robustness of this technique. Improper selection of effective singular values will lead to bad performance of SVD de-noising. What is more, the computational complexity of SVD is too large for it to be applied in real-time applications. In this paper, to eliminate the uncertainty in SVD de-noising, a novel flaw indicator, named the maximum singular value indicator (MSI), based on short-time SVD (STSVD), is proposed for flaw feature detection from a measured signal in ultrasonic NDE. In this technique, the measured signal is first truncated into overlapping short-time data segments to put feature information of a transient flaw echo signal in local field, and then the MSI can be obtained from the SVD of each short-time data segment. Research shows that this indicator can clearly indicate the location of ultrasonic flaw signals, and the computational complexity of this STSVD-based indicator is significantly reduced with the algorithm proposed in this paper. Both simulation and experiments show that this technique is very efficient for real-time application in flaw detection from noisy data.

Application of time-resolved glucose concentration photoacoustic signals based on an improved wavelet denoising

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ren, Zhong; Liu, Guodong; Huang, Zhen

2014-10-01

Real-time monitoring of blood glucose concentration (BGC) is a great important procedure in controlling diabetes mellitus and preventing the complication for diabetic patients. Noninvasive measurement of BGC has already become a research hotspot because it can overcome the physical and psychological harm. Photoacoustic spectroscopy is a well-established, hybrid and alternative technique used to determine the BGC. According to the theory of photoacoustic technique, the blood is irradiated by plused laser with nano-second repeation time and micro-joule power, the photoacoustic singals contained the information of BGC are generated due to the thermal-elastic mechanism, then the BGC level can be interpreted from photoacoustic signal via the data analysis. But in practice, the time-resolved photoacoustic signals of BGC are polluted by the varities of noises, e.g., the interference of background sounds and multi-component of blood. The quality of photoacoustic signal of BGC directly impacts the precision of BGC measurement. So, an improved wavelet denoising method was proposed to eliminate the noises contained in BGC photoacoustic signals. To overcome the shortcoming of traditional wavelet threshold denoising, an improved dual-threshold wavelet function was proposed in this paper. Simulation experimental results illustrated that the denoising result of this improved wavelet method was better than that of traditional soft and hard threshold function. To varify the feasibility of this improved function, the actual photoacoustic BGC signals were test, the test reslut demonstrated that the signal-to-noises ratio(SNR) of the improved function increases about 40-80%, and its root-mean-square error (RMSE) decreases about 38.7-52.8%.

A new method of SC image processing for confluence estimation.

PubMed

Soleimani, Sajjad; Mirzaei, Mohsen; Toncu, Dana-Cristina

2017-10-01

Stem cells images are a strong instrument in the estimation of confluency during their culturing for therapeutic processes. Various laboratory conditions, such as lighting, cell container support and image acquisition equipment, effect on the image quality, subsequently on the estimation efficiency. This paper describes an efficient image processing method for cell pattern recognition and morphological analysis of images that were affected by uneven background. The proposed algorithm for enhancing the image is based on coupling a novel image denoising method through BM3D filter with an adaptive thresholding technique for improving the uneven background. This algorithm works well to provide a faster, easier, and more reliable method than manual measurement for the confluency assessment of stem cell cultures. The present scheme proves to be valid for the prediction of the confluency and growth of stem cells at early stages for tissue engineering in reparatory clinical surgery. The method used in this paper is capable of processing the image of the cells, which have already contained various defects due to either personnel mishandling or microscope limitations. Therefore, it provides proper information even out of the worst original images available. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Research on Ship-Radiated Noise Denoising Using Secondary Variational Mode Decomposition and Correlation Coefficient.

PubMed

Li, Yuxing; Li, Yaan; Chen, Xiao; Yu, Jing

2017-12-26

As the sound signal of ships obtained by sensors contains other many significant characteristics of ships and called ship-radiated noise (SN), research into a denoising algorithm and its application has obtained great significance. Using the advantage of variational mode decomposition (VMD) combined with the correlation coefficient for denoising, a hybrid secondary denoising algorithm is proposed using secondary VMD combined with a correlation coefficient (CC). First, different kinds of simulation signals are decomposed into several bandwidth-limited intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) using VMD, where the decomposition number by VMD is equal to the number by empirical mode decomposition (EMD); then, the CCs between the IMFs and the simulation signal are calculated respectively. The noise IMFs are identified by the CC threshold and the rest of the IMFs are reconstructed in order to realize the first denoising process. Finally, secondary denoising of the simulation signal can be accomplished by repeating the above steps of decomposition, screening and reconstruction. The final denoising result is determined according to the CC threshold. The denoising effect is compared under the different signal-to-noise ratio and the time of decomposition by VMD. Experimental results show the validity of the proposed denoising algorithm using secondary VMD (2VMD) combined with CC compared to EMD denoising, ensemble EMD (EEMD) denoising, VMD denoising and cubic VMD (3VMD) denoising, as well as two denoising algorithms presented recently. The proposed denoising algorithm is applied to feature extraction and classification for SN signals, which can effectively improve the recognition rate of different kinds of ships.

Comparison of wavelet based denoising schemes for gear condition monitoring: An Artificial Neural Network based Approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ahmed, Rounaq; Srinivasa Pai, P.; Sriram, N. S.; Bhat, Vasudeva

2018-02-01

Vibration Analysis has been extensively used in recent past for gear fault diagnosis. The vibration signals extracted is usually contaminated with noise and may lead to wrong interpretation of results. The denoising of extracted vibration signals helps the fault diagnosis by giving meaningful results. Wavelet Transform (WT) increases signal to noise ratio (SNR), reduces root mean square error (RMSE) and is effective to denoise the gear vibration signals. The extracted signals have to be denoised by selecting a proper denoising scheme in order to prevent the loss of signal information along with noise. An approach has been made in this work to show the effectiveness of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to denoise gear vibration signal. In this regard three selected wavelet based denoising schemes namely PCA, Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD), Neighcoeff Coefficient (NC), has been compared with Adaptive Threshold (AT) an extensively used wavelet based denoising scheme for gear vibration signal. The vibration signals acquired from a customized gear test rig were denoised by above mentioned four denoising schemes. The fault identification capability as well as SNR, Kurtosis and RMSE for the four denoising schemes have been compared. Features extracted from the denoised signals have been used to train and test artificial neural network (ANN) models. The performances of the four denoising schemes have been evaluated based on the performance of the ANN models. The best denoising scheme has been identified, based on the classification accuracy results. PCA is effective in all the regards as a best denoising scheme.

Fusion of visible and near-infrared images based on luminance estimation by weighted luminance algorithm

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Zhun; Cheng, Feiyan; Shi, Junsheng; Huang, Xiaoqiao

2018-01-01

In a low-light scene, capturing color images needs to be at a high-gain setting or a long-exposure setting to avoid a visible flash. However, such these setting will lead to color images with serious noise or motion blur. Several methods have been proposed to improve a noise-color image through an invisible near infrared flash image. A novel method is that the luminance component and the chroma component of the improved color image are estimated from different image sources [1]. The luminance component is estimated mainly from the NIR image via a spectral estimation, and the chroma component is estimated from the noise-color image by denoising. However, it is challenging to estimate the luminance component. This novel method to estimate the luminance component needs to generate the learning data pairs, and the processes and algorithm are complex. It is difficult to achieve practical application. In order to reduce the complexity of the luminance estimation, an improved luminance estimation algorithm is presented in this paper, which is to weight the NIR image and the denoised-color image and the weighted coefficients are based on the mean value and standard deviation of both images. Experimental results show that the same fusion effect at aspect of color fidelity and texture quality is achieved, compared the proposed method with the novel method, however, the algorithm is more simple and practical.

Mixed Gaussian-Impulse Noise Image Restoration Via Total Variation

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-05-01

deblurring under impulse noise ,” J. Math. Imaging Vis., vol. 36, pp. 46–53, January 2010. [5] B. Li, Q. Liu, J. Xu, and X. Luo, “A new method for removing......Several Total Variation (TV) regularization methods have recently been proposed to address denoising under mixed Gaussian and impulse noise . While

Bayesian inference on multiscale models for poisson intensity estimation: applications to photon-limited image denoising.

PubMed

Lefkimmiatis, Stamatios; Maragos, Petros; Papandreou, George

2009-08-01

We present an improved statistical model for analyzing Poisson processes, with applications to photon-limited imaging. We build on previous work, adopting a multiscale representation of the Poisson process in which the ratios of the underlying Poisson intensities (rates) in adjacent scales are modeled as mixtures of conjugate parametric distributions. Our main contributions include: 1) a rigorous and robust regularized expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm for maximum-likelihood estimation of the rate-ratio density parameters directly from the noisy observed Poisson data (counts); 2) extension of the method to work under a multiscale hidden Markov tree model (HMT) which couples the mixture label assignments in consecutive scales, thus modeling interscale coefficient dependencies in the vicinity of image edges; 3) exploration of a 2-D recursive quad-tree image representation, involving Dirichlet-mixture rate-ratio densities, instead of the conventional separable binary-tree image representation involving beta-mixture rate-ratio densities; and 4) a novel multiscale image representation, which we term Poisson-Haar decomposition, that better models the image edge structure, thus yielding improved performance. Experimental results on standard images with artificially simulated Poisson noise and on real photon-limited images demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques.

Poisson denoising on the sphere

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Schmitt, J.; Starck, J. L.; Fadili, J.; Grenier, I.; Casandjian, J. M.

2009-08-01

In the scope of the Fermi mission, Poisson noise removal should improve data quality and make source detection easier. This paper presents a method for Poisson data denoising on sphere, called Multi-Scale Variance Stabilizing Transform on Sphere (MS-VSTS). This method is based on a Variance Stabilizing Transform (VST), a transform which aims to stabilize a Poisson data set such that each stabilized sample has an (asymptotically) constant variance. In addition, for the VST used in the method, the transformed data are asymptotically Gaussian. Thus, MS-VSTS consists in decomposing the data into a sparse multi-scale dictionary (wavelets, curvelets, ridgelets...), and then applying a VST on the coefficients in order to get quasi-Gaussian stabilized coefficients. In this present article, the used multi-scale transform is the Isotropic Undecimated Wavelet Transform. Then, hypothesis tests are made to detect significant coefficients, and the denoised image is reconstructed with an iterative method based on Hybrid Steepest Descent (HST). The method is tested on simulated Fermi data.

Dictionary learning based noisy image super-resolution via distance penalty weight model

PubMed Central

Han, Yulan; Zhao, Yongping; Wang, Qisong

2017-01-01

In this study, we address the problem of noisy image super-resolution. Noisy low resolution (LR) image is always obtained in applications, while most of the existing algorithms assume that the LR image is noise-free. As to this situation, we present an algorithm for noisy image super-resolution which can achieve simultaneously image super-resolution and denoising. And in the training stage of our method, LR example images are noise-free. For different input LR images, even if the noise variance varies, the dictionary pair does not need to be retrained. For the input LR image patch, the corresponding high resolution (HR) image patch is reconstructed through weighted average of similar HR example patches. To reduce computational cost, we use the atoms of learned sparse dictionary as the examples instead of original example patches. We proposed a distance penalty model for calculating the weight, which can complete a second selection on similar atoms at the same time. Moreover, LR example patches removed mean pixel value are also used to learn dictionary rather than just their gradient features. Based on this, we can reconstruct initial estimated HR image and denoised LR image. Combined with iterative back projection, the two reconstructed images are applied to obtain final estimated HR image. We validate our algorithm on natural images and compared with the previously reported algorithms. Experimental results show that our proposed method performs better noise robustness. PMID:28759633

3D Wavelet-Based Filter and Method

DOEpatents

Moss, William C.; Haase, Sebastian; Sedat, John W.

2008-08-12

A 3D wavelet-based filter for visualizing and locating structural features of a user-specified linear size in 2D or 3D image data. The only input parameter is a characteristic linear size of the feature of interest, and the filter output contains only those regions that are correlated with the characteristic size, thus denoising the image.

A Regularization Approach to Blind Deblurring and Denoising of QR Barcodes.

PubMed

van Gennip, Yves; Athavale, Prashant; Gilles, Jérôme; Choksi, Rustum

2015-09-01

QR bar codes are prototypical images for which part of the image is a priori known (required patterns). Open source bar code readers, such as ZBar, are readily available. We exploit both these facts to provide and assess purely regularization-based methods for blind deblurring of QR bar codes in the presence of noise.

A Variational Approach to the Denoising of Images Based on Different Variants of the TV-Regularization

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Bildhauer, Michael, E-mail: bibi@math.uni-sb.de; Fuchs, Martin, E-mail: fuchs@math.uni-sb.de

2012-12-15

We discuss several variants of the TV-regularization model used in image recovery. The proposed alternatives are either of nearly linear growth or even of linear growth, but with some weak ellipticity properties. The main feature of the paper is the investigation of the analytic properties of the corresponding solutions.

Iterative image-domain decomposition for dual-energy CT

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Niu, Tianye; Dong, Xue; Petrongolo, Michael

2014-04-15

Purpose: Dual energy CT (DECT) imaging plays an important role in advanced imaging applications due to its capability of material decomposition. Direct decomposition via matrix inversion suffers from significant degradation of image signal-to-noise ratios, which reduces clinical values of DECT. Existing denoising algorithms achieve suboptimal performance since they suppress image noise either before or after the decomposition and do not fully explore the noise statistical properties of the decomposition process. In this work, the authors propose an iterative image-domain decomposition method for noise suppression in DECT, using the full variance-covariance matrix of the decomposed images. Methods: The proposed algorithm ismore » formulated in the form of least-square estimation with smoothness regularization. Based on the design principles of a best linear unbiased estimator, the authors include the inverse of the estimated variance-covariance matrix of the decomposed images as the penalty weight in the least-square term. The regularization term enforces the image smoothness by calculating the square sum of neighboring pixel value differences. To retain the boundary sharpness of the decomposed images, the authors detect the edges in the CT images before decomposition. These edge pixels have small weights in the calculation of the regularization term. Distinct from the existing denoising algorithms applied on the images before or after decomposition, the method has an iterative process for noise suppression, with decomposition performed in each iteration. The authors implement the proposed algorithm using a standard conjugate gradient algorithm. The method performance is evaluated using an evaluation phantom (Catphan©600) and an anthropomorphic head phantom. The results are compared with those generated using direct matrix inversion with no noise suppression, a denoising method applied on the decomposed images, and an existing algorithm with similar formulation as the proposed method but with an edge-preserving regularization term. Results: On the Catphan phantom, the method maintains the same spatial resolution on the decomposed images as that of the CT images before decomposition (8 pairs/cm) while significantly reducing their noise standard deviation. Compared to that obtained by the direct matrix inversion, the noise standard deviation in the images decomposed by the proposed algorithm is reduced by over 98%. Without considering the noise correlation properties in the formulation, the denoising scheme degrades the spatial resolution to 6 pairs/cm for the same level of noise suppression. Compared to the edge-preserving algorithm, the method achieves better low-contrast detectability. A quantitative study is performed on the contrast-rod slice of Catphan phantom. The proposed method achieves lower electron density measurement error as compared to that by the direct matrix inversion, and significantly reduces the error variation by over 97%. On the head phantom, the method reduces the noise standard deviation of decomposed images by over 97% without blurring the sinus structures. Conclusions: The authors propose an iterative image-domain decomposition method for DECT. The method combines noise suppression and material decomposition into an iterative process and achieves both goals simultaneously. By exploring the full variance-covariance properties of the decomposed images and utilizing the edge predetection, the proposed algorithm shows superior performance on noise suppression with high image spatial resolution and low-contrast detectability.« less

Photogrammetric DSM denoising

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nex, F.; Gerke, M.

2014-08-01

Image matching techniques can nowadays provide very dense point clouds and they are often considered a valid alternative to LiDAR point cloud. However, photogrammetric point clouds are often characterized by a higher level of random noise compared to LiDAR data and by the presence of large outliers. These problems constitute a limitation in the practical use of photogrammetric data for many applications but an effective way to enhance the generated point cloud has still to be found. In this paper we concentrate on the restoration of Digital Surface Models (DSM), computed from dense image matching point clouds. A photogrammetric DSM, i.e. a 2.5D representation of the surface is still one of the major products derived from point clouds. Four different algorithms devoted to DSM denoising are presented: a standard median filter approach, a bilateral filter, a variational approach (TGV: Total Generalized Variation), as well as a newly developed algorithm, which is embedded into a Markov Random Field (MRF) framework and optimized through graph-cuts. The ability of each algorithm to recover the original DSM has been quantitatively evaluated. To do that, a synthetic DSM has been generated and different typologies of noise have been added to mimic the typical errors of photogrammetric DSMs. The evaluation reveals that standard filters like median and edge preserving smoothing through a bilateral filter approach cannot sufficiently remove typical errors occurring in a photogrammetric DSM. The TGV-based approach much better removes random noise, but large areas with outliers still remain. Our own method which explicitly models the degradation properties of those DSM outperforms the others in all aspects.

Photoacoustic signals denoising of the glucose aqueous solutions using an improved wavelet threshold method

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ren, Zhong; Liu, Guodong; Xiong, Zhihua

2016-10-01

The photoacoustic signals denoising of glucose is one of most important steps in the quality identification of the fruit because the real-time photoacoustic singals of glucose are easily interfered by all kinds of noises. To remove the noises and some useless information, an improved wavelet threshld function were proposed. Compared with the traditional wavelet hard and soft threshold functions, the improved wavelet threshold function can overcome the pseudo-oscillation effect of the denoised photoacoustic signals due to the continuity of the improved wavelet threshold function, and the error between the denoised signals and the original signals can be decreased. To validate the feasibility of the improved wavelet threshold function denoising, the denoising simulation experiments based on MATLAB programmimg were performed. In the simulation experiments, the standard test signal was used, and three different denoising methods were used and compared with the improved wavelet threshold function. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the root-mean-square error (RMSE) values were used to evaluate the performance of the improved wavelet threshold function denoising. The experimental results demonstrate that the SNR value of the improved wavelet threshold function is largest and the RMSE value is lest, which fully verifies that the improved wavelet threshold function denoising is feasible. Finally, the improved wavelet threshold function denoising was used to remove the noises of the photoacoustic signals of the glucose solutions. The denoising effect is also very good. Therefore, the improved wavelet threshold function denoising proposed by this paper, has a potential value in the field of denoising for the photoacoustic singals.

A shape-preserving oriented partial differential equation based on a new fidelity term for electronic speckle pattern interferometry fringe patterns denoising

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xu, Wenjun; Tang, Chen; Zheng, Tingyue; Qiu, Yue

2018-07-01

Oriented partial differential equations (OPDEs) have been demonstrated to be a powerful tool for preserving the integrity of fringes while filtering electronic speckle pattern interferometry (ESPI) fringe patterns. However, the main drawback of OPDEs-based methods is that many iterations are often needed, which causes the change in the shape of fringes. Change in the shape of fringes will affect the accuracy of subsequent fringe analysis. In this paper, we focus on preserving the shape of fringes while filtering, suggested here for the first time. We propose a shape-preserving OPDE for ESPI fringe patterns denoising by introducing a new fidelity term to the previous second-order single oriented PDE (SOOPDE). In our proposed fidelity term, the evolution image is subtracted from the shrinkage result of original noisy image by shearlet transform. Our proposed shape-preserving OPDE is capable of eliminating noise effectively, keeping the integrity of fringes, and more importantly, preserving the shape of fringes. We test the proposed shape-preserving OPDE on three computer-simulated and three experimentally obtained ESPI fringe patterns with poor quality. Furthermore, we compare our model with three representative filtering methods, including the widely used SOOPDE, shearlet transform and coherence-enhancing diffusion (CED). We also compare our proposed fidelity term with the traditional fidelity term. Experimental results show that the proposed shape-preserving OPDE not only yields filtered images with visual quality on par with those by CED which is the state-of-the-art method for ESPI fringe patterns denoising, but also keeps the shape of ESPI fringe patterns.

Image Processing and Computer Aided Diagnosis in Computed Tomography of the Breast

DTIC Science & Technology

2007-03-01

TERMS breast imaging, breast CT, scatter compensation, denoising, CAD , Cone-beam CT 16. SECURITY CLASSIFICATION OF: 17. LIMITATION OF...clinical projection images. The CAD tool based on signal known exactly (SKE) scenario is under development. Task 6: Test and compare the...performances of the CAD developed in Task 5 applied to processed projection data from Task 1 with the CAD performance on the projection data without Bayesian

High-quality compressive ghost imaging

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Huang, Heyan; Zhou, Cheng; Tian, Tian; Liu, Dongqi; Song, Lijun

2018-04-01

We propose a high-quality compressive ghost imaging method based on projected Landweber regularization and guided filter, which effectively reduce the undersampling noise and improve the resolution. In our scheme, the original object is reconstructed by decomposing of regularization and denoising steps instead of solving a minimization problem in compressive reconstruction process. The simulation and experimental results show that our method can obtain high ghost imaging quality in terms of PSNR and visual observation.

Multisensor signal denoising based on matching synchrosqueezing wavelet transform for mechanical fault condition assessment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yi, Cancan; Lv, Yong; Xiao, Han; Huang, Tao; You, Guanghui

2018-04-01

Since it is difficult to obtain the accurate running status of mechanical equipment with only one sensor, multisensor measurement technology has attracted extensive attention. In the field of mechanical fault diagnosis and condition assessment based on vibration signal analysis, multisensor signal denoising has emerged as an important tool to improve the reliability of the measurement result. A reassignment technique termed the synchrosqueezing wavelet transform (SWT) has obvious superiority in slow time-varying signal representation and denoising for fault diagnosis applications. The SWT uses the time-frequency reassignment scheme, which can provide signal properties in 2D domains (time and frequency). However, when the measured signal contains strong noise components and fast varying instantaneous frequency, the performance of SWT-based analysis still depends on the accuracy of instantaneous frequency estimation. In this paper, a matching synchrosqueezing wavelet transform (MSWT) is investigated as a potential candidate to replace the conventional synchrosqueezing transform for the applications of denoising and fault feature extraction. The improved technology utilizes the comprehensive instantaneous frequency estimation by chirp rate estimation to achieve a highly concentrated time-frequency representation so that the signal resolution can be significantly improved. To exploit inter-channel dependencies, the multisensor denoising strategy is performed by using a modulated multivariate oscillation model to partition the time-frequency domain; then, the common characteristics of the multivariate data can be effectively identified. Furthermore, a modified universal threshold is utilized to remove noise components, while the signal components of interest can be retained. Thus, a novel MSWT-based multisensor signal denoising algorithm is proposed in this paper. The validity of this method is verified by numerical simulation, and experiments including a rolling bearing system and a gear system. The results show that the proposed multisensor matching synchronous squeezing wavelet transform (MMSWT) is superior to existing methods.

Color TV: total variation methods for restoration of vector-valued images.

PubMed

Blomgren, P; Chan, T F

1998-01-01

We propose a new definition of the total variation (TV) norm for vector-valued functions that can be applied to restore color and other vector-valued images. The new TV norm has the desirable properties of 1) not penalizing discontinuities (edges) in the image, 2) being rotationally invariant in the image space, and 3) reducing to the usual TV norm in the scalar case. Some numerical experiments on denoising simple color images in red-green-blue (RGB) color space are presented.

Evaluation of Denoising Strategies to Address Motion-Correlated Artifacts in Resting-State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Data from the Human Connectome Project

PubMed Central

Kandala, Sridhar; Nolan, Dan; Laumann, Timothy O.; Power, Jonathan D.; Adeyemo, Babatunde; Harms, Michael P.; Petersen, Steven E.; Barch, Deanna M.

2016-01-01

Abstract Like all resting-state functional connectivity data, the data from the Human Connectome Project (HCP) are adversely affected by structured noise artifacts arising from head motion and physiological processes. Functional connectivity estimates (Pearson's correlation coefficients) were inflated for high-motion time points and for high-motion participants. This inflation occurred across the brain, suggesting the presence of globally distributed artifacts. The degree of inflation was further increased for connections between nearby regions compared with distant regions, suggesting the presence of distance-dependent spatially specific artifacts. We evaluated several denoising methods: censoring high-motion time points, motion regression, the FMRIB independent component analysis-based X-noiseifier (FIX), and mean grayordinate time series regression (MGTR; as a proxy for global signal regression). The results suggest that FIX denoising reduced both types of artifacts, but left substantial global artifacts behind. MGTR significantly reduced global artifacts, but left substantial spatially specific artifacts behind. Censoring high-motion time points resulted in a small reduction of distance-dependent and global artifacts, eliminating neither type. All denoising strategies left differences between high- and low-motion participants, but only MGTR substantially reduced those differences. Ultimately, functional connectivity estimates from HCP data showed spatially specific and globally distributed artifacts, and the most effective approach to address both types of motion-correlated artifacts was a combination of FIX and MGTR. PMID:27571276

Texture Feature Analysis for Different Resolution Level of Kidney Ultrasound Images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kairuddin, Wan Nur Hafsha Wan; Mahmud, Wan Mahani Hafizah Wan

2017-08-01

Image feature extraction is a technique to identify the characteristic of the image. The objective of this work is to discover the texture features that best describe a tissue characteristic of a healthy kidney from ultrasound (US) image. Three ultrasound machines that have different specifications are used in order to get a different quality (different resolution) of the image. Initially, the acquired images are pre-processed to de-noise the speckle to ensure the image preserve the pixels in a region of interest (ROI) for further extraction. Gaussian Low- pass Filter is chosen as the filtering method in this work. 150 of enhanced images then are segmented by creating a foreground and background of image where the mask is created to eliminate some unwanted intensity values. Statistical based texture features method is used namely Intensity Histogram (IH), Gray-Level Co-Occurance Matrix (GLCM) and Gray-level run-length matrix (GLRLM).This method is depends on the spatial distribution of intensity values or gray levels in the kidney region. By using One-Way ANOVA in SPSS, the result indicated that three features (Contrast, Difference Variance and Inverse Difference Moment Normalized) from GLCM are not statistically significant; this concludes that these three features describe a healthy kidney characteristics regardless of the ultrasound image quality.

Two-Stage Approach to Image Classification by Deep Neural Networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ososkov, Gennady; Goncharov, Pavel

2018-02-01

The paper demonstrates the advantages of the deep learning networks over the ordinary neural networks on their comparative applications to image classifying. An autoassociative neural network is used as a standalone autoencoder for prior extraction of the most informative features of the input data for neural networks to be compared further as classifiers. The main efforts to deal with deep learning networks are spent for a quite painstaking work of optimizing the structures of those networks and their components, as activation functions, weights, as well as the procedures of minimizing their loss function to improve their performances and speed up their learning time. It is also shown that the deep autoencoders develop the remarkable ability for denoising images after being specially trained. Convolutional Neural Networks are also used to solve a quite actual problem of protein genetics on the example of the durum wheat classification. Results of our comparative study demonstrate the undoubted advantage of the deep networks, as well as the denoising power of the autoencoders. In our work we use both GPU and cloud services to speed up the calculations.

Post-Processing of Low Dose Mammography Images

DTIC Science & Technology

2002-05-01

method of restoring images in the presence of blur as well as noise ” (12:276). The deblurring and denoising characteristics make Wiener filtering...independent noise . The signal dependant scatter noise can be modeled as blur in the mammography image. A Wiener filter with deblurring characteristics can...centered on. This method is used to eradicate noise impulses with high 26 pixel values (2:7). For the research at hand, the median filter would

DHMI: dynamic holographic microscopy interface

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

He, Xuefei; Zheng, Yujie; Lee, Woei Ming

2016-12-01

Digital holographic microscopy (DHM) is a powerful in-vitro biological imaging tool. In this paper, we report a fully automated off-axis digital holographic microscopy system completed with a graphical user interface in the Matlab environment. The interface primarily includes Fourier domain processing, phase reconstruction, aberration compensation and autofocusing. A variety of imaging operations such as region of interest selection, de-noising mode (filtering and averaging), low frame rate imaging for immediate reconstruction and high frame rate imaging routine ( 27 fps) are implemented to facilitate ease of use.

Mathematical filtering minimizes metallic halation of titanium implants in MicroCT images.

PubMed

Ha, Jee; Osher, Stanley J; Nishimura, Ichiro

2013-01-01

Microcomputed tomography (MicroCT) images containing titanium implant suffer from x-rays scattering, artifact and the implant surface is critically affected by metallic halation. To improve the metallic halation artifact, a nonlinear Total Variation denoising algorithm such as Split Bregman algorithm was applied to the digital data set of MicroCT images. This study demonstrated that the use of a mathematical filter could successfully reduce metallic halation, facilitating the osseointegration evaluation at the bone implant interface in the reconstructed images.

Cloud-Scale Genomic Signals Processing for Robust Large-Scale Cancer Genomic Microarray Data Analysis.

PubMed

Harvey, Benjamin Simeon; Ji, Soo-Yeon

2017-01-01

As microarray data available to scientists continues to increase in size and complexity, it has become overwhelmingly important to find multiple ways to bring forth oncological inference to the bioinformatics community through the analysis of large-scale cancer genomic (LSCG) DNA and mRNA microarray data that is useful to scientists. Though there have been many attempts to elucidate the issue of bringing forth biological interpretation by means of wavelet preprocessing and classification, there has not been a research effort that focuses on a cloud-scale distributed parallel (CSDP) separable 1-D wavelet decomposition technique for denoising through differential expression thresholding and classification of LSCG microarray data. This research presents a novel methodology that utilizes a CSDP separable 1-D method for wavelet-based transformation in order to initialize a threshold which will retain significantly expressed genes through the denoising process for robust classification of cancer patients. Additionally, the overall study was implemented and encompassed within CSDP environment. The utilization of cloud computing and wavelet-based thresholding for denoising was used for the classification of samples within the Global Cancer Map, Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia, and The Cancer Genome Atlas. The results proved that separable 1-D parallel distributed wavelet denoising in the cloud and differential expression thresholding increased the computational performance and enabled the generation of higher quality LSCG microarray datasets, which led to more accurate classification results.

Denoising, deconvolving, and decomposing photon observations. Derivation of the D3PO algorithm

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Selig, Marco; Enßlin, Torsten A.

2015-02-01

The analysis of astronomical images is a non-trivial task. The D3PO algorithm addresses the inference problem of denoising, deconvolving, and decomposing photon observations. Its primary goal is the simultaneous but individual reconstruction of the diffuse and point-like photon flux given a single photon count image, where the fluxes are superimposed. In order to discriminate between these morphologically different signal components, a probabilistic algorithm is derived in the language of information field theory based on a hierarchical Bayesian parameter model. The signal inference exploits prior information on the spatial correlation structure of the diffuse component and the brightness distribution of the spatially uncorrelated point-like sources. A maximum a posteriori solution and a solution minimizing the Gibbs free energy of the inference problem using variational Bayesian methods are discussed. Since the derivation of the solution is not dependent on the underlying position space, the implementation of the D3PO algorithm uses the nifty package to ensure applicability to various spatial grids and at any resolution. The fidelity of the algorithm is validated by the analysis of simulated data, including a realistic high energy photon count image showing a 32 × 32 arcmin2 observation with a spatial resolution of 0.1 arcmin. In all tests the D3PO algorithm successfully denoised, deconvolved, and decomposed the data into a diffuse and a point-like signal estimate for the respective photon flux components. A copy of the code is available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (ftp://130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/qcat?J/A+A/574/A74

Multiband multi-echo imaging of simultaneous oxygenation and flow timeseries for resting state connectivity.

PubMed

Cohen, Alexander D; Nencka, Andrew S; Lebel, R Marc; Wang, Yang

2017-01-01

A novel sequence has been introduced that combines multiband imaging with a multi-echo acquisition for simultaneous high spatial resolution pseudo-continuous arterial spin labeling (ASL) and blood-oxygenation-level dependent (BOLD) echo-planar imaging (MBME ASL/BOLD). Resting-state connectivity in healthy adult subjects was assessed using this sequence. Four echoes were acquired with a multiband acceleration of four, in order to increase spatial resolution, shorten repetition time, and reduce slice-timing effects on the ASL signal. In addition, by acquiring four echoes, advanced multi-echo independent component analysis (ME-ICA) denoising could be employed to increase the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and BOLD sensitivity. Seed-based and dual-regression approaches were utilized to analyze functional connectivity. Cerebral blood flow (CBF) and BOLD coupling was also evaluated by correlating the perfusion-weighted timeseries with the BOLD timeseries. These metrics were compared between single echo (E2), multi-echo combined (MEC), multi-echo combined and denoised (MECDN), and perfusion-weighted (PW) timeseries. Temporal SNR increased for the MECDN data compared to the MEC and E2 data. Connectivity also increased, in terms of correlation strength and network size, for the MECDN compared to the MEC and E2 datasets. CBF and BOLD coupling was increased in major resting-state networks, and that correlation was strongest for the MECDN datasets. These results indicate our novel MBME ASL/BOLD sequence, which collects simultaneous high-resolution ASL/BOLD data, could be a powerful tool for detecting functional connectivity and dynamic neurovascular coupling during the resting state. The collection of more than two echoes facilitates the use of ME-ICA denoising to greatly improve the quality of resting state functional connectivity MRI.

Accuracy Enhancement of Inertial Sensors Utilizing High Resolution Spectral Analysis

PubMed Central

Noureldin, Aboelmagd; Armstrong, Justin; El-Shafie, Ahmed; Karamat, Tashfeen; McGaughey, Don; Korenberg, Michael; Hussain, Aini

2012-01-01

In both military and civilian applications, the inertial navigation system (INS) and the global positioning system (GPS) are two complementary technologies that can be integrated to provide reliable positioning and navigation information for land vehicles. The accuracy enhancement of INS sensors and the integration of INS with GPS are the subjects of widespread research. Wavelet de-noising of INS sensors has had limited success in removing the long-term (low-frequency) inertial sensor errors. The primary objective of this research is to develop a novel inertial sensor accuracy enhancement technique that can remove both short-term and long-term error components from inertial sensor measurements prior to INS mechanization and INS/GPS integration. A high resolution spectral analysis technique called the fast orthogonal search (FOS) algorithm is used to accurately model the low frequency range of the spectrum, which includes the vehicle motion dynamics and inertial sensor errors. FOS models the spectral components with the most energy first and uses an adaptive threshold to stop adding frequency terms when fitting a term does not reduce the mean squared error more than fitting white noise. The proposed method was developed, tested and validated through road test experiments involving both low-end tactical grade and low cost MEMS-based inertial systems. The results demonstrate that in most cases the position accuracy during GPS outages using FOS de-noised data is superior to the position accuracy using wavelet de-noising.

Energy-Based Wavelet De-Noising of Hydrologic Time Series

PubMed Central

Sang, Yan-Fang; Liu, Changming; Wang, Zhonggen; Wen, Jun; Shang, Lunyu

2014-01-01

De-noising is a substantial issue in hydrologic time series analysis, but it is a difficult task due to the defect of methods. In this paper an energy-based wavelet de-noising method was proposed. It is to remove noise by comparing energy distribution of series with the background energy distribution, which is established from Monte-Carlo test. Differing from wavelet threshold de-noising (WTD) method with the basis of wavelet coefficient thresholding, the proposed method is based on energy distribution of series. It can distinguish noise from deterministic components in series, and uncertainty of de-noising result can be quantitatively estimated using proper confidence interval, but WTD method cannot do this. Analysis of both synthetic and observed series verified the comparable power of the proposed method and WTD, but de-noising process by the former is more easily operable. The results also indicate the influences of three key factors (wavelet choice, decomposition level choice and noise content) on wavelet de-noising. Wavelet should be carefully chosen when using the proposed method. The suitable decomposition level for wavelet de-noising should correspond to series' deterministic sub-signal which has the smallest temporal scale. If too much noise is included in a series, accurate de-noising result cannot be obtained by the proposed method or WTD, but the series would show pure random but not autocorrelation characters, so de-noising is no longer needed. PMID:25360533

Multiclass Data Segmentation using Diffuse Interface Methods on Graphs

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-01-01

37] that performs interac- tive image segmentation using the solution to a combinatorial Dirichlet problem. Elmoataz et al . have developed general...izations of the graph Laplacian [25] for image denoising and manifold smoothing. Couprie et al . in [18] define a conve- niently parameterized graph...continuous setting carry over to the discrete graph representation. For general data segmentation, Bresson et al . in [8], present rigorous convergence

Assessment of Restoration Methods of X-Ray Images with Emphasis on Medical Photogrammetric Usage

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hosseinian, S.; Arefi, H.

2016-06-01

Nowadays, various medical X-ray imaging methods such as digital radiography, computed tomography and fluoroscopy are used as important tools in diagnostic and operative processes especially in the computer and robotic assisted surgeries. The procedures of extracting information from these images require appropriate deblurring and denoising processes on the pre- and intra-operative images in order to obtain more accurate information. This issue becomes more considerable when the X-ray images are planned to be employed in the photogrammetric processes for 3D reconstruction from multi-view X-ray images since, accurate data should be extracted from images for 3D modelling and the quality of X-ray images affects directly on the results of the algorithms. For restoration of X-ray images, it is essential to consider the nature and characteristics of these kinds of images. X-ray images exhibit severe quantum noise due to limited X-ray photons involved. The assumptions of Gaussian modelling are not appropriate for photon-limited images such as X-ray images, because of the nature of signal-dependant quantum noise. These images are generally modelled by Poisson distribution which is the most common model for low-intensity imaging. In this paper, existing methods are evaluated. For this purpose, after demonstrating the properties of medical X-ray images, the more efficient and recommended methods for restoration of X-ray images would be described and assessed. After explaining these approaches, they are implemented on samples from different kinds of X-ray images. By considering the results, it is concluded that using PURE-LET, provides more effective and efficient denoising than other examined methods in this research.

Analysis of two dimensional signals via curvelet transform

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lech, W.; Wójcik, W.; Kotyra, A.; Popiel, P.; Duk, M.

2007-04-01

This paper describes an application of curvelet transform analysis problem of interferometric images. Comparing to two-dimensional wavelet transform, curvelet transform has higher time-frequency resolution. This article includes numerical experiments, which were executed on random interferometric image. In the result of nonlinear approximations, curvelet transform obtains matrix with smaller number of coefficients than is guaranteed by wavelet transform. Additionally, denoising simulations show that curvelet could be a very good tool to remove noise from images.

3D imaging of optically cleared tissue using a simplified CLARITY method and on-chip microscopy

PubMed Central

Zhang, Yibo; Shin, Yoonjung; Sung, Kevin; Yang, Sam; Chen, Harrison; Wang, Hongda; Teng, Da; Rivenson, Yair; Kulkarni, Rajan P.; Ozcan, Aydogan

2017-01-01

High-throughput sectioning and optical imaging of tissue samples using traditional immunohistochemical techniques can be costly and inaccessible in resource-limited areas. We demonstrate three-dimensional (3D) imaging and phenotyping in optically transparent tissue using lens-free holographic on-chip microscopy as a low-cost, simple, and high-throughput alternative to conventional approaches. The tissue sample is passively cleared using a simplified CLARITY method and stained using 3,3′-diaminobenzidine to target cells of interest, enabling bright-field optical imaging and 3D sectioning of thick samples. The lens-free computational microscope uses pixel super-resolution and multi-height phase recovery algorithms to digitally refocus throughout the cleared tissue and obtain a 3D stack of complex-valued images of the sample, containing both phase and amplitude information. We optimized the tissue-clearing and imaging system by finding the optimal illumination wavelength, tissue thickness, sample preparation parameters, and the number of heights of the lens-free image acquisition and implemented a sparsity-based denoising algorithm to maximize the imaging volume and minimize the amount of the acquired data while also preserving the contrast-to-noise ratio of the reconstructed images. As a proof of concept, we achieved 3D imaging of neurons in a 200-μm-thick cleared mouse brain tissue over a wide field of view of 20.5 mm2. The lens-free microscope also achieved more than an order-of-magnitude reduction in raw data compared to a conventional scanning optical microscope imaging the same sample volume. Being low cost, simple, high-throughput, and data-efficient, we believe that this CLARITY-enabled computational tissue imaging technique could find numerous applications in biomedical diagnosis and research in low-resource settings. PMID:28819645

Removal of EMG and ECG artifacts from EEG based on wavelet transform and ICA.

PubMed

Zhou, Weidong; Gotman, Jean

2004-01-01

In this study, the methods of wavelet threshold de-noising and independent component analysis (ICA) are introduced. ICA is a novel signal processing technique based on high order statistics, and is used to separate independent components from measurements. The extended ICA algorithm does not need to calculate the higher order statistics, converges fast, and can be used to separate subGaussian and superGaussian sources. A pre-whitening procedure is performed to de-correlate the mixed signals before extracting sources. The experimental results indicate the electromyogram (EMG) and electrocardiograph (ECG) artifacts in electroencephalograph (EEG) can be removed by a combination of wavelet threshold de-noising and ICA.

Intelligent detectors modelled from the cat's eye

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lindblad, Th.; Becanovic, V.; Lindsey, C. S.; Szekely, G.

1997-02-01

Biologically inspired image/signal processing, in particular neural networks like the Pulse-Coupled Neural Network (PCNN), are revisited. Their use with high granularity high-energy physics detectors, as well as optical sensing devices, for filtering, de-noising, segmentation, object isolation and edge detection is discussed.

HARDI denoising using nonlocal means on S2

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kuurstra, Alan; Dolui, Sudipto; Michailovich, Oleg

2012-02-01

Diffusion MRI (dMRI) is a unique imaging modality for in vivo delineation of the anatomical structure of white matter in the brain. In particular, high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) is a specific instance of dMRI which is known to excel in detection of multiple neural fibers within a single voxel. Unfortunately, the angular resolution of HARDI is known to be inversely proportional to SNR, which makes the problem of denoising of HARDI data be of particular practical importance. Since HARDI signals are effectively band-limited, denoising can be accomplished by means of linear filtering. However, the spatial dependency of diffusivity in brain tissue makes it impossible to find a single set of linear filter parameters which is optimal for all types of diffusion signals. Hence, adaptive filtering is required. In this paper, we propose a new type of non-local means (NLM) filtering which possesses the required adaptivity property. As opposed to similar methods in the field, however, the proposed NLM filtering is applied in the spherical domain of spatial orientations. Moreover, the filter uses an original definition of adaptive weights, which are designed to be invariant to both spatial rotations as well as to a particular sampling scheme in use. As well, we provide a detailed description of the proposed filtering procedure, its efficient implementation, as well as experimental results with synthetic data. We demonstrate that our filter has substantially better adaptivity as compared to a number of alternative methods.

Remote Sensing Image Change Detection Based on NSCT-HMT Model and Its Application.

PubMed

Chen, Pengyun; Zhang, Yichen; Jia, Zhenhong; Yang, Jie; Kasabov, Nikola

2017-06-06

Traditional image change detection based on a non-subsampled contourlet transform always ignores the neighborhood information's relationship to the non-subsampled contourlet coefficients, and the detection results are susceptible to noise interference. To address these disadvantages, we propose a denoising method based on the non-subsampled contourlet transform domain that uses the Hidden Markov Tree model (NSCT-HMT) for change detection of remote sensing images. First, the ENVI software is used to calibrate the original remote sensing images. After that, the mean-ratio operation is adopted to obtain the difference image that will be denoised by the NSCT-HMT model. Then, using the Fuzzy Local Information C-means (FLICM) algorithm, the difference image is divided into the change area and unchanged area. The proposed algorithm is applied to a real remote sensing data set. The application results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively suppress clutter noise, and retain more detailed information from the original images. The proposed algorithm has higher detection accuracy than the Markov Random Field-Fuzzy C-means (MRF-FCM), the non-subsampled contourlet transform-Fuzzy C-means clustering (NSCT-FCM), the pointwise approach and graph theory (PA-GT), and the Principal Component Analysis-Nonlocal Means (PCA-NLM) denosing algorithm. Finally, the five algorithms are used to detect the southern boundary of the Gurbantunggut Desert in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China, and the results show that the proposed algorithm has the best effect on real remote sensing image change detection.

Remote Sensing Image Change Detection Based on NSCT-HMT Model and Its Application

PubMed Central

Chen, Pengyun; Zhang, Yichen; Jia, Zhenhong; Yang, Jie; Kasabov, Nikola

2017-01-01

Traditional image change detection based on a non-subsampled contourlet transform always ignores the neighborhood information’s relationship to the non-subsampled contourlet coefficients, and the detection results are susceptible to noise interference. To address these disadvantages, we propose a denoising method based on the non-subsampled contourlet transform domain that uses the Hidden Markov Tree model (NSCT-HMT) for change detection of remote sensing images. First, the ENVI software is used to calibrate the original remote sensing images. After that, the mean-ratio operation is adopted to obtain the difference image that will be denoised by the NSCT-HMT model. Then, using the Fuzzy Local Information C-means (FLICM) algorithm, the difference image is divided into the change area and unchanged area. The proposed algorithm is applied to a real remote sensing data set. The application results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively suppress clutter noise, and retain more detailed information from the original images. The proposed algorithm has higher detection accuracy than the Markov Random Field-Fuzzy C-means (MRF-FCM), the non-subsampled contourlet transform-Fuzzy C-means clustering (NSCT-FCM), the pointwise approach and graph theory (PA-GT), and the Principal Component Analysis-Nonlocal Means (PCA-NLM) denosing algorithm. Finally, the five algorithms are used to detect the southern boundary of the Gurbantunggut Desert in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China, and the results show that the proposed algorithm has the best effect on real remote sensing image change detection. PMID:28587299

Quantifying Pharmaceutical Film Coating with Optical Coherence Tomography and Terahertz Pulsed Imaging: An Evaluation.

PubMed

Lin, Hungyen; Dong, Yue; Shen, Yaochun; Zeitler, J Axel

2015-10-01

Spectral domain optical coherence tomography (OCT) has recently attracted a lot of interest in the pharmaceutical industry as a fast and non-destructive modality for quantification of thin film coatings that cannot easily be resolved with other techniques. Because of the relative infancy of this technique, much of the research to date has focused on developing the in-line measurement technique for assessing film coating thickness. To better assess OCT for pharmaceutical coating quantification, this paper evaluates tablets with a range of film coating thickness measured using OCT and terahertz pulsed imaging (TPI) in an off-line setting. In order to facilitate automated coating quantification for film coating thickness in the range of 30-200 μm, an algorithm that uses wavelet denoising and a tailored peak finding method is proposed to analyse each of the acquired A-scan. Results obtained from running the algorithm reveal an increasing disparity between the TPI and OCT measured intra-tablet variability when film coating thickness exceeds 100 μm. The finding further confirms that OCT is a suitable modality for characterising pharmaceutical dosage forms with thin film coatings, whereas TPI is well suited for thick coatings. © 2015 The Authors. Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. and the American Pharmacists Association.

Chaotic Signal Denoising Based on Hierarchical Threshold Synchrosqueezed Wavelet Transform

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Wen-Bo; Jing, Yun-yu; Zhao, Yan-chao; Zhang, Lian-Hua; Wang, Xiang-Li

2017-12-01

In order to overcoming the shortcoming of single threshold synchrosqueezed wavelet transform(SWT) denoising method, an adaptive hierarchical threshold SWT chaotic signal denoising method is proposed. Firstly, a new SWT threshold function is constructed based on Stein unbiased risk estimation, which is two order continuous derivable. Then, by using of the new threshold function, a threshold process based on the minimum mean square error was implemented, and the optimal estimation value of each layer threshold in SWT chaotic denoising is obtained. The experimental results of the simulating chaotic signal and measured sunspot signals show that, the proposed method can filter the noise of chaotic signal well, and the intrinsic chaotic characteristic of the original signal can be recovered very well. Compared with the EEMD denoising method and the single threshold SWT denoising method, the proposed method can obtain better denoising result for the chaotic signal.

GPR random noise reduction using BPD and EMD

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ostoori, Roya; Goudarzi, Alireza; Oskooi, Behrooz

2018-04-01

Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) exploration is a new high-frequency technology that explores near-surface objects and structures accurately. The high-frequency antenna of the GPR system makes it a high-resolution method compared to other geophysical methods. The frequency range of recorded GPR is so wide that random noise recording is inevitable due to acquisition. This kind of noise comes from unknown sources and its correlation to the adjacent traces is nearly zero. This characteristic of random noise along with the higher accuracy of GPR system makes denoising very important for interpretable results. The main objective of this paper is to reduce GPR random noise based on pursuing denoising using empirical mode decomposition. Our results showed that empirical mode decomposition in combination with basis pursuit denoising (BPD) provides satisfactory outputs due to the sifting process compared to the time-domain implementation of the BPD method on both synthetic and real examples. Our results demonstrate that because of the high computational costs, the BPD-empirical mode decomposition technique should only be used for heavily noisy signals.

Intelligent identification of remnant ridge edges in region west of Yongxing Island, South China Sea

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Weiwei; Guo, Jing; Cai, Guanqiang; Wang, Dawei

2018-02-01

Edge detection enables identification of geomorphologic unit boundaries and thus assists with geomorphical mapping. In this paper, an intelligent edge identification method is proposed and image processing techniques are applied to multi-beam bathymetry data. To accomplish this, a color image is generated by the bathymetry, and a weighted method is used to convert the color image to a gray image. As the quality of the image has a significant influence on edge detection, different filter methods are applied to the gray image for de-noising. The peak signal-to-noise ratio and mean square error are calculated to evaluate which filter method is most appropriate for depth image filtering and the edge is subsequently detected using an image binarization method. Traditional image binarization methods cannot manage the complicated uneven seafloor, and therefore a binarization method is proposed that is based on the difference between image pixel values; the appropriate threshold for image binarization is estimated according to the probability distribution of pixel value differences between two adjacent pixels in horizontal and vertical directions, respectively. Finally, an eight-neighborhood frame is adopted to thin the binary image, connect the intermittent edge, and implement contour extraction. Experimental results show that the method described here can recognize the main boundaries of geomorphologic units. In addition, the proposed automatic edge identification method avoids use of subjective judgment, and reduces time and labor costs.

Exploring an optimal wavelet-based filter for cryo-ET imaging.

PubMed

Huang, Xinrui; Li, Sha; Gao, Song

2018-02-07

Cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) is one of the most advanced technologies for the in situ visualization of molecular machines by producing three-dimensional (3D) biological structures. However, cryo-ET imaging has two serious disadvantages-low dose and low image contrast-which result in high-resolution information being obscured by noise and image quality being degraded, and this causes errors in biological interpretation. The purpose of this research is to explore an optimal wavelet denoising technique to reduce noise in cryo-ET images. We perform tests using simulation data and design a filter using the optimum selected wavelet parameters (three-level decomposition, level-1 zeroed out, subband-dependent threshold, a soft-thresholding and spline-based discrete dyadic wavelet transform (DDWT)), which we call a modified wavelet shrinkage filter; this filter is suitable for noisy cryo-ET data. When testing using real cryo-ET experiment data, higher quality images and more accurate measures of a biological structure can be obtained with the modified wavelet shrinkage filter processing compared with conventional processing. Because the proposed method provides an inherent advantage when dealing with cryo-ET images, it can therefore extend the current state-of-the-art technology in assisting all aspects of cryo-ET studies: visualization, reconstruction, structural analysis, and interpretation.

Neural network face recognition using wavelets

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Karunaratne, Passant V.; Jouny, Ismail I.

1997-04-01

The recognition of human faces is a phenomenon that has been mastered by the human visual system and that has been researched extensively in the domain of computer neural networks and image processing. This research is involved in the study of neural networks and wavelet image processing techniques in the application of human face recognition. The objective of the system is to acquire a digitized still image of a human face, carry out pre-processing on the image as required, an then, given a prior database of images of possible individuals, be able to recognize the individual in the image. The pre-processing segment of the system includes several procedures, namely image compression, denoising, and feature extraction. The image processing is carried out using Daubechies wavelets. Once the images have been passed through the wavelet-based image processor they can be efficiently analyzed by means of a neural network. A back- propagation neural network is used for the recognition segment of the system. The main constraints of the system is with regard to the characteristics of the images being processed. The system should be able to carry out effective recognition of the human faces irrespective of the individual's facial-expression, presence of extraneous objects such as head-gear or spectacles, and face/head orientation. A potential application of this face recognition system would be as a secondary verification method in an automated teller machine.

Multiclass Data Segmentation Using Diffuse Interface Methods on Graphs

DTIC Science & Technology

2014-01-01

interac- tive image segmentation using the solution to a combinatorial Dirichlet problem. Elmoataz et al . have developed general- izations of the graph...Laplacian [25] for image denoising and manifold smoothing. Couprie et al . in [18] define a conve- niently parameterized graph-based energy function that...over to the discrete graph representation. For general data segmentation, Bresson et al . in [8], present rigorous convergence results for two algorithms

Restoration of low-dose digital breast tomosynthesis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Borges, Lucas R.; Azzari, Lucio; Bakic, Predrag R.; Maidment, Andrew D. A.; Vieira, Marcelo A. C.; Foi, Alessandro

2018-06-01

In breast cancer screening, the radiation dose must be kept to the minimum necessary to achieve the desired diagnostic objective, thus minimizing risks associated with cancer induction. However, decreasing the radiation dose also degrades the image quality. In this work we restore digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) projections acquired at low radiation doses with the goal of achieving a quality comparable to that obtained from current standard full-dose imaging protocols. A multiframe denoising algorithm was applied to low-dose projections, which are filtered jointly. Furthermore, a weighted average was used to inject a varying portion of the noisy signal back into the denoised one, in order to attain a signal-to-noise ratio comparable to that of standard full-dose projections. The entire restoration framework leverages a signal-dependent noise model with quantum gain which varies both upon the projection angle and on the pixel position. A clinical DBT system and a 3D anthropomorphic breast phantom were used to validate the proposed method, both on DBT projections and slices from the 3D reconstructed volume. The framework is shown to attain the standard full-dose image quality from data acquired at 50% lower radiation dose, whereas progressive loss of relevant details compromises the image quality if the dosage is further decreased.

Graph cuts for curvature based image denoising.

PubMed

Bae, Egil; Shi, Juan; Tai, Xue-Cheng

2011-05-01

Minimization of total variation (TV) is a well-known method for image denoising. Recently, the relationship between TV minimization problems and binary MRF models has been much explored. This has resulted in some very efficient combinatorial optimization algorithms for the TV minimization problem in the discrete setting via graph cuts. To overcome limitations, such as staircasing effects, of the relatively simple TV model, variational models based upon higher order derivatives have been proposed. The Euler's elastica model is one such higher order model of central importance, which minimizes the curvature of all level lines in the image. Traditional numerical methods for minimizing the energy in such higher order models are complicated and computationally complex. In this paper, we will present an efficient minimization algorithm based upon graph cuts for minimizing the energy in the Euler's elastica model, by simplifying the problem to that of solving a sequence of easy graph representable problems. This sequence has connections to the gradient flow of the energy function, and converges to a minimum point. The numerical experiments show that our new approach is more effective in maintaining smooth visual results while preserving sharp features better than TV models.

Evaluation of effectiveness of wavelet based denoising schemes using ANN and SVM for bearing condition classification.

PubMed

Vijay, G S; Kumar, H S; Srinivasa Pai, P; Sriram, N S; Rao, Raj B K N

2012-01-01

The wavelet based denoising has proven its ability to denoise the bearing vibration signals by improving the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and reducing the root-mean-square error (RMSE). In this paper seven wavelet based denoising schemes have been evaluated based on the performance of the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and the Support Vector Machine (SVM), for the bearing condition classification. The work consists of two parts, the first part in which a synthetic signal simulating the defective bearing vibration signal with Gaussian noise was subjected to these denoising schemes. The best scheme based on the SNR and the RMSE was identified. In the second part, the vibration signals collected from a customized Rolling Element Bearing (REB) test rig for four bearing conditions were subjected to these denoising schemes. Several time and frequency domain features were extracted from the denoised signals, out of which a few sensitive features were selected using the Fisher's Criterion (FC). Extracted features were used to train and test the ANN and the SVM. The best denoising scheme identified, based on the classification performances of the ANN and the SVM, was found to be the same as the one obtained using the synthetic signal.

Image denoising for real-time MRI.

PubMed

Klosowski, Jakob; Frahm, Jens

2017-03-01

To develop an image noise filter suitable for MRI in real time (acquisition and display), which preserves small isolated details and efficiently removes background noise without introducing blur, smearing, or patch artifacts. The proposed method extends the nonlocal means algorithm to adapt the influence of the original pixel value according to a simple measure for patch regularity. Detail preservation is improved by a compactly supported weighting kernel that closely approximates the commonly used exponential weight, while an oracle step ensures efficient background noise removal. Denoising experiments were conducted on real-time images of healthy subjects reconstructed by regularized nonlinear inversion from radial acquisitions with pronounced undersampling. The filter leads to a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) improvement of at least 60% without noticeable artifacts or loss of detail. The method visually compares to more complex state-of-the-art filters as the block-matching three-dimensional filter and in certain cases better matches the underlying noise model. Acceleration of the computation to more than 100 complex frames per second using graphics processing units is straightforward. The sensitivity of nonlocal means to small details can be significantly increased by the simple strategies presented here, which allows partial restoration of SNR in iteratively reconstructed images without introducing a noticeable time delay or image artifacts. Magn Reson Med 77:1340-1352, 2017. © 2016 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. © 2016 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

Assessing denoising strategies to increase signal to noise ratio in spinal cord and in brain cortical and subcortical regions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Maugeri, L.; Moraschi, M.; Summers, P.; Favilla, S.; Mascali, D.; Cedola, A.; Porro, C. A.; Giove, F.; Fratini, M.

2018-02-01

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) based on Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent (BOLD) contrast has become one of the most powerful tools in neuroscience research. On the other hand, fMRI approaches have seen limited use in the study of spinal cord and subcortical brain regions (such as the brainstem and portions of the diencephalon). Indeed obtaining good BOLD signal in these areas still represents a technical and scientific challenge, due to poor control of physiological noise and to a limited overall quality of the functional series. A solution can be found in the combination of optimized experimental procedures at acquisition stage, and well-adapted artifact mitigation procedures in the data processing. In this framework, we studied two different data processing strategies to reduce physiological noise in cortical and subcortical brain regions and in the spinal cord, based on the aCompCor and RETROICOR denoising tools respectively. The study, performed in healthy subjects, was carried out using an ad hoc isometric motor task. We observed an increased signal to noise ratio in the denoised functional time series in the spinal cord and in the subcortical brain region.

Fast high resolution reconstruction in multi-slice and multi-view cMRI

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Velasco Toledo, Nelson; Romero Castro, Eduardo

2015-01-01

Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (cMRI) is an useful tool in diagnosis, prognosis and research since it functionally tracks the heart structure. Although useful, this imaging technique is limited in spatial resolution because heart is a constant moving organ, also there are other non controled conditions such as patient movements and volumetric changes during apnea periods when data is acquired, those conditions limit the time to capture high quality information. This paper presents a very fast and simple strategy to reconstruct high resolution 3D images from a set of low resolution series of 2D images. The strategy is based on an information reallocation algorithm which uses the DICOM header to relocate voxel intensities in a regular grid. An interpolation method is applied to fill empty places with estimated data, the interpolation resamples the low resolution information to estimate the missing information. As a final step a gaussian filter that denoises the final result. A reconstructed image evaluation is performed using as a reference a super-resolution reconstructed image. The evaluation reveals that the method maintains the general heart structure with a small loss in detailed information (edge sharpening and blurring), some artifacts related with input information quality are detected. The proposed method requires low time and computational resources.

Video Denoising via Dynamic Video Layering

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Guo, Han; Vaswani, Namrata

2018-07-01

Video denoising refers to the problem of removing "noise" from a video sequence. Here the term "noise" is used in a broad sense to refer to any corruption or outlier or interference that is not the quantity of interest. In this work, we develop a novel approach to video denoising that is based on the idea that many noisy or corrupted videos can be split into three parts - the "low-rank layer", the "sparse layer", and a small residual (which is small and bounded). We show, using extensive experiments, that our denoising approach outperforms the state-of-the-art denoising algorithms.

Global positioning method based on polarized light compass system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Jun; Yang, Jiangtao; Wang, Yubo; Tang, Jun; Shen, Chong

2018-05-01

This paper presents a global positioning method based on a polarized light compass system. A main limitation of polarization positioning is the environment such as weak and locally destroyed polarization environments, and the solution to the positioning problem is given in this paper which is polarization image de-noising and segmentation. Therefore, the pulse coupled neural network is employed for enhancing positioning performance. The prominent advantages of the present positioning technique are as follows: (i) compared to the existing position method based on polarized light, better sun tracking accuracy can be achieved and (ii) the robustness and accuracy of positioning under weak and locally destroyed polarization environments, such as cloudy or building shielding, are improved significantly. Finally, some field experiments are given to demonstrate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed global positioning technique. The experiments have shown that our proposed method outperforms the conventional polarization positioning method, the real time longitude and latitude with accuracy up to 0.0461° and 0.0911°, respectively.

Combined iterative reconstruction and image-domain decomposition for dual energy CT using total-variation regularization

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Dong, Xue; Niu, Tianye; Zhu, Lei, E-mail: leizhu@gatech.edu

2014-05-15

Purpose: Dual-energy CT (DECT) is being increasingly used for its capability of material decomposition and energy-selective imaging. A generic problem of DECT, however, is that the decomposition process is unstable in the sense that the relative magnitude of decomposed signals is reduced due to signal cancellation while the image noise is accumulating from the two CT images of independent scans. Direct image decomposition, therefore, leads to severe degradation of signal-to-noise ratio on the resultant images. Existing noise suppression techniques are typically implemented in DECT with the procedures of reconstruction and decomposition performed independently, which do not explore the statistical propertiesmore » of decomposed images during the reconstruction for noise reduction. In this work, the authors propose an iterative approach that combines the reconstruction and the signal decomposition procedures to minimize the DECT image noise without noticeable loss of resolution. Methods: The proposed algorithm is formulated as an optimization problem, which balances the data fidelity and total variation of decomposed images in one framework, and the decomposition step is carried out iteratively together with reconstruction. The noise in the CT images from the proposed algorithm becomes well correlated even though the noise of the raw projections is independent on the two CT scans. Due to this feature, the proposed algorithm avoids noise accumulation during the decomposition process. The authors evaluate the method performance on noise suppression and spatial resolution using phantom studies and compare the algorithm with conventional denoising approaches as well as combined iterative reconstruction methods with different forms of regularization. Results: On the Catphan©600 phantom, the proposed method outperforms the existing denoising methods on preserving spatial resolution at the same level of noise suppression, i.e., a reduction of noise standard deviation by one order of magnitude. This improvement is mainly attributed to the high noise correlation in the CT images reconstructed by the proposed algorithm. Iterative reconstruction using different regularization, including quadratic orq-generalized Gaussian Markov random field regularization, achieves similar noise suppression from high noise correlation. However, the proposed TV regularization obtains a better edge preserving performance. Studies of electron density measurement also show that our method reduces the average estimation error from 9.5% to 7.1%. On the anthropomorphic head phantom, the proposed method suppresses the noise standard deviation of the decomposed images by a factor of ∼14 without blurring the fine structures in the sinus area. Conclusions: The authors propose a practical method for DECT imaging reconstruction, which combines the image reconstruction and material decomposition into one optimization framework. Compared to the existing approaches, our method achieves a superior performance on DECT imaging with respect to decomposition accuracy, noise reduction, and spatial resolution.« less

Single image super resolution algorithm based on edge interpolation in NSCT domain

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Mengqun; Zhang, Wei; He, Xinyu

2017-11-01

In order to preserve the texture and edge information and to improve the space resolution of single frame, a superresolution algorithm based on Contourlet (NSCT) is proposed. The original low resolution image is transformed by NSCT, and the directional sub-band coefficients of the transform domain are obtained. According to the scale factor, the high frequency sub-band coefficients are amplified by the interpolation method based on the edge direction to the desired resolution. For high frequency sub-band coefficients with noise and weak targets, Bayesian shrinkage is used to calculate the threshold value. The coefficients below the threshold are determined by the correlation among the sub-bands of the same scale to determine whether it is noise and de-noising. The anisotropic diffusion filter is used to effectively enhance the weak target in the low contrast region of the target and background. Finally, the high-frequency sub-band is amplified by the bilinear interpolation method to the desired resolution, and then combined with the high-frequency subband coefficients after de-noising and small target enhancement, the NSCT inverse transform is used to obtain the desired resolution image. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, the proposed algorithm and several common image reconstruction methods are used to test the synthetic image, motion blurred image and hyperspectral image, the experimental results show that compared with the traditional single resolution algorithm, the proposed algorithm can obtain smooth edges and good texture features, and the reconstructed image structure is well preserved and the noise is suppressed to some extent.

Vibration Sensor Data Denoising Using a Time-Frequency Manifold for Machinery Fault Diagnosis

PubMed Central

He, Qingbo; Wang, Xiangxiang; Zhou, Qiang

2014-01-01

Vibration sensor data from a mechanical system are often associated with important measurement information useful for machinery fault diagnosis. However, in practice the existence of background noise makes it difficult to identify the fault signature from the sensing data. This paper introduces the time-frequency manifold (TFM) concept into sensor data denoising and proposes a novel denoising method for reliable machinery fault diagnosis. The TFM signature reflects the intrinsic time-frequency structure of a non-stationary signal. The proposed method intends to realize data denoising by synthesizing the TFM using time-frequency synthesis and phase space reconstruction (PSR) synthesis. Due to the merits of the TFM in noise suppression and resolution enhancement, the denoised signal would have satisfactory denoising effects, as well as inherent time-frequency structure keeping. Moreover, this paper presents a clustering-based statistical parameter to evaluate the proposed method, and also presents a new diagnostic approach, called frequency probability time series (FPTS) spectral analysis, to show its effectiveness in fault diagnosis. The proposed TFM-based data denoising method has been employed to deal with a set of vibration sensor data from defective bearings, and the results verify that for machinery fault diagnosis the method is superior to two traditional denoising methods. PMID:24379045

ERP denoising in multichannel EEG data using contrasts between signal and noise subspaces.

PubMed

Ivannikov, Andriy; Kalyakin, Igor; Hämäläinen, Jarmo; Leppänen, Paavo H T; Ristaniemi, Tapani; Lyytinen, Heikki; Kärkkäinen, Tommi

2009-06-15

In this paper, a new method intended for ERP denoising in multichannel EEG data is discussed. The denoising is done by separating ERP/noise subspaces in multidimensional EEG data by a linear transformation and the following dimension reduction by ignoring noise components during inverse transformation. The separation matrix is found based on the assumption that ERP sources are deterministic for all repetitions of the same type of stimulus within the experiment, while the other noise sources do not obey the determinancy property. A detailed derivation of the technique is given together with the analysis of the results of its application to a real high-density EEG data set. The interpretation of the results and the performance of the proposed method under conditions, when the basic assumptions are violated - e.g. the problem is underdetermined - are also discussed. Moreover, we study how the factors of the number of channels and trials used by the method influence the effectiveness of ERP/noise subspaces separation. In addition, we explore also the impact of different data resampling strategies on the performance of the considered algorithm. The results can help in determining the optimal parameters of the equipment/methods used to elicit and reliably estimate ERPs.

A fast method to emulate an iterative POCS image reconstruction algorithm.

PubMed

Zeng, Gengsheng L

2017-10-01

Iterative image reconstruction algorithms are commonly used to optimize an objective function, especially when the objective function is nonquadratic. Generally speaking, the iterative algorithms are computationally inefficient. This paper presents a fast algorithm that has one backprojection and no forward projection. This paper derives a new method to solve an optimization problem. The nonquadratic constraint, for example, an edge-preserving denoising constraint is implemented as a nonlinear filter. The algorithm is derived based on the POCS (projections onto projections onto convex sets) approach. A windowed FBP (filtered backprojection) algorithm enforces the data fidelity. An iterative procedure, divided into segments, enforces edge-enhancement denoising. Each segment performs nonlinear filtering. The derived iterative algorithm is computationally efficient. It contains only one backprojection and no forward projection. Low-dose CT data are used for algorithm feasibility studies. The nonlinearity is implemented as an edge-enhancing noise-smoothing filter. The patient studies results demonstrate its effectiveness in processing low-dose x ray CT data. This fast algorithm can be used to replace many iterative algorithms. © 2017 American Association of Physicists in Medicine.

A Bayesian analysis of redshifted 21-cm H I signal and foregrounds: simulations for LOFAR

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ghosh, Abhik; Koopmans, Léon V. E.; Chapman, E.; Jelić, V.

2015-09-01

Observations of the epoch of reionization (EoR) using the 21-cm hyperfine emission of neutral hydrogen (H I) promise to open an entirely new window on the formation of the first stars, galaxies and accreting black holes. In order to characterize the weak 21-cm signal, we need to develop imaging techniques that can reconstruct the extended emission very precisely. Here, we present an inversion technique for LOw Frequency ARray (LOFAR) baselines at the North Celestial Pole (NCP), based on a Bayesian formalism with optimal spatial regularization, which is used to reconstruct the diffuse foreground map directly from the simulated visibility data. We notice that the spatial regularization de-noises the images to a large extent, allowing one to recover the 21-cm power spectrum over a considerable k⊥-k∥ space in the range 0.03 Mpc-1 < k⊥ < 0.19 Mpc-1 and 0.14 Mpc-1 < k∥ < 0.35 Mpc-1 without subtracting the noise power spectrum. We find that, in combination with using generalized morphological component analysis (GMCA), a non-parametric foreground removal technique, we can mostly recover the spherical average power spectrum within 2σ statistical fluctuations for an input Gaussian random root-mean-square noise level of 60 mK in the maps after 600 h of integration over a 10-MHz bandwidth.

Quantifying Pharmaceutical Film Coating with Optical Coherence Tomography and Terahertz Pulsed Imaging: An Evaluation

PubMed Central

Lin, Hungyen; Dong, Yue; Shen, Yaochun; Zeitler, J Axel

2015-01-01

Spectral domain optical coherence tomography (OCT) has recently attracted a lot of interest in the pharmaceutical industry as a fast and non-destructive modality for quantification of thin film coatings that cannot easily be resolved with other techniques. Because of the relative infancy of this technique, much of the research to date has focused on developing the in-line measurement technique for assessing film coating thickness. To better assess OCT for pharmaceutical coating quantification, this paper evaluates tablets with a range of film coating thickness measured using OCT and terahertz pulsed imaging (TPI) in an off-line setting. In order to facilitate automated coating quantification for film coating thickness in the range of 30–200 μm, an algorithm that uses wavelet denoising and a tailored peak finding method is proposed to analyse each of the acquired A-scan. Results obtained from running the algorithm reveal an increasing disparity between the TPI and OCT measured intra-tablet variability when film coating thickness exceeds 100 μm. The finding further confirms that OCT is a suitable modality for characterising pharmaceutical dosage forms with thin film coatings, whereas TPI is well suited for thick coatings. © 2015 The Authors. Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. and the American Pharmacists Association J Pharm Sci 104:3377–3385, 2015 PMID:26284354

Quantifying Pharmaceutical Film Coating with Optical Coherence Tomography and Terahertz Pulsed Imaging: An Evaluation.

PubMed

Lin, Hungyen; Dong, Yue; Shen, Yaochun; Axel Zeitler, J

2015-10-01

Spectral domain optical coherence tomography (OCT) has recently attracted a lot of interest in the pharmaceutical industry as a fast and non-destructive modality for quantification of thin film coatings that cannot easily be resolved with other techniques. Because of the relative infancy of this technique, much of the research to date has focused on developing the in-line measurement technique for assessing film coating thickness. To better assess OCT for pharmaceutical coating quantification, this paper evaluates tablets with a range of film coating thickness measured using OCT and terahertz pulsed imaging (TPI) in an off-line setting. In order to facilitate automated coating quantification for film coating thickness in the range of 30-200μm, an algorithm that uses wavelet denoising and a tailored peak finding method is proposed to analyse each of the acquired A-scan. Results obtained from running the algorithm reveal an increasing disparity between the TPI and OCT measured intra-tablet variability when film coating thickness exceeds 100μm. The finding further confirms that OCT is a suitable modality for characterising pharmaceutical dosage forms with thin film coatings, whereas TPI is well suited for thick coatings. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. and the American Pharmacists Association J Pharm Sci 104:3377-3385, 2015. Copyright © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. and the American Pharmacists Association.

Extended Kalman smoother with differential evolution technique for denoising of ECG signal.

PubMed

Panigrahy, D; Sahu, P K

2016-09-01

Electrocardiogram (ECG) signal gives a lot of information on the physiology of heart. In reality, noise from various sources interfere with the ECG signal. To get the correct information on physiology of the heart, noise cancellation of the ECG signal is required. In this paper, the effectiveness of extended Kalman smoother (EKS) with the differential evolution (DE) technique for noise cancellation of the ECG signal is investigated. DE is used as an automatic parameter selection method for the selection of ten optimized components of the ECG signal, and those are used to create the ECG signal according to the real ECG signal. These parameters are used by the EKS for the development of the state equation and also for initialization of the parameters of EKS. EKS framework is used for denoising the ECG signal from the single channel. The effectiveness of proposed noise cancellation technique has been evaluated by adding white, colored Gaussian noise and real muscle artifact noise at different SNR to some visually clean ECG signals from the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database. The proposed noise cancellation technique of ECG signal shows better signal to noise ratio (SNR) improvement, lesser mean square error (MSE) and percent of distortion (PRD) compared to other well-known methods.

Enhancing micro-seismic P-phase arrival picking: EMD-cosine function-based denoising with an application to the AIC picker

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shang, Xueyi; Li, Xibing; Morales-Esteban, A.; Dong, Longjun

2018-03-01

Micro-seismic P-phase arrival picking is an elementary step into seismic event location, source mechanism analysis, and seismic tomography. However, a micro-seismic signal is often mixed with high frequency noises and power frequency noises (50 Hz), which could considerably reduce P-phase picking accuracy. To solve this problem, an Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD)-cosine function denoising-based Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) picker (ECD-AIC picker) is proposed for picking the P-phase arrival time. Unlike traditional low pass filters which are ineffective when seismic data and noise bandwidths overlap, the EMD adaptively separates the seismic data and the noise into different Intrinsic Mode Functions (IMFs). Furthermore, the EMD-cosine function-based denoising retains the P-phase arrival amplitude and phase spectrum more reliably than any traditional low pass filter. The ECD-AIC picker was tested on 1938 sets of micro-seismic waveforms randomly selected from the Institute of Mine Seismology (IMS) database of the Chinese Yongshaba mine. The results have shown that the EMD-cosine function denoising can effectively estimate high frequency and power frequency noises and can be easily adapted to perform on signals with different shapes and forms. Qualitative and quantitative comparisons show that the combined ECD-AIC picker provides better picking results than both the ED-AIC picker and the AIC picker, and the comparisons also show more reliable source localization results when the ECD-AIC picker is applied, thus showing the potential of this combined P-phase picking technique.

Study on the algorithm of computational ghost imaging based on discrete fourier transform measurement matrix

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Leihong; Liang, Dong; Li, Bei; Kang, Yi; Pan, Zilan; Zhang, Dawei; Gao, Xiumin; Ma, Xiuhua

2016-07-01

On the basis of analyzing the cosine light field with determined analytic expression and the pseudo-inverse method, the object is illuminated by a presetting light field with a determined discrete Fourier transform measurement matrix, and the object image is reconstructed by the pseudo-inverse method. The analytic expression of the algorithm of computational ghost imaging based on discrete Fourier transform measurement matrix is deduced theoretically, and compared with the algorithm of compressive computational ghost imaging based on random measurement matrix. The reconstruction process and the reconstruction error are analyzed. On this basis, the simulation is done to verify the theoretical analysis. When the sampling measurement number is similar to the number of object pixel, the rank of discrete Fourier transform matrix is the same as the one of the random measurement matrix, the PSNR of the reconstruction image of FGI algorithm and PGI algorithm are similar, the reconstruction error of the traditional CGI algorithm is lower than that of reconstruction image based on FGI algorithm and PGI algorithm. As the decreasing of the number of sampling measurement, the PSNR of reconstruction image based on FGI algorithm decreases slowly, and the PSNR of reconstruction image based on PGI algorithm and CGI algorithm decreases sharply. The reconstruction time of FGI algorithm is lower than that of other algorithms and is not affected by the number of sampling measurement. The FGI algorithm can effectively filter out the random white noise through a low-pass filter and realize the reconstruction denoising which has a higher denoising capability than that of the CGI algorithm. The FGI algorithm can improve the reconstruction accuracy and the reconstruction speed of computational ghost imaging.

Deep Convolutional Framelet Denosing for Low-Dose CT via Wavelet Residual Network.

PubMed

Kang, Eunhee; Chang, Won; Yoo, Jaejun; Ye, Jong Chul

2018-06-01

Model-based iterative reconstruction algorithms for low-dose X-ray computed tomography (CT) are computationally expensive. To address this problem, we recently proposed a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) for low-dose X-ray CT and won the second place in 2016 AAPM Low-Dose CT Grand Challenge. However, some of the textures were not fully recovered. To address this problem, here we propose a novel framelet-based denoising algorithm using wavelet residual network which synergistically combines the expressive power of deep learning and the performance guarantee from the framelet-based denoising algorithms. The new algorithms were inspired by the recent interpretation of the deep CNN as a cascaded convolution framelet signal representation. Extensive experimental results confirm that the proposed networks have significantly improved performance and preserve the detail texture of the original images.

A novel structured dictionary for fast processing of 3D medical images, with application to computed tomography restoration and denoising

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Karimi, Davood; Ward, Rabab K.

2016-03-01

Sparse representation of signals in learned overcomplete dictionaries has proven to be a powerful tool with applications in denoising, restoration, compression, reconstruction, and more. Recent research has shown that learned overcomplete dictionaries can lead to better results than analytical dictionaries such as wavelets in almost all image processing applications. However, a major disadvantage of these dictionaries is that their learning and usage is very computationally intensive. In particular, finding the sparse representation of a signal in these dictionaries requires solving an optimization problem that leads to very long computational times, especially in 3D image processing. Moreover, the sparse representation found by greedy algorithms is usually sub-optimal. In this paper, we propose a novel two-level dictionary structure that improves the performance and the speed of standard greedy sparse coding methods. The first (i.e., the top) level in our dictionary is a fixed orthonormal basis, whereas the second level includes the atoms that are learned from the training data. We explain how such a dictionary can be learned from the training data and how the sparse representation of a new signal in this dictionary can be computed. As an application, we use the proposed dictionary structure for removing the noise and artifacts in 3D computed tomography (CT) images. Our experiments with real CT images show that the proposed method achieves results that are comparable with standard dictionary-based methods while substantially reducing the computational time.

Three-Dimensional Velocity Field De-Noising using Modal Projection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Frank, Sarah; Ameli, Siavash; Szeri, Andrew; Shadden, Shawn

2017-11-01

PCMRI and Doppler ultrasound are common modalities for imaging velocity fields inside the body (e.g. blood, air, etc) and PCMRI is increasingly being used for other fluid mechanics applications where optical imaging is difficult. This type of imaging is typically applied to internal flows, which are strongly influenced by domain geometry. While these technologies are evolving, it remains that measured data is noisy and boundary layers are poorly resolved. We have developed a boundary modal analysis method to de-noise 3D velocity fields such that the resulting field is divergence-free and satisfies no-slip/no-penetration boundary conditions. First, two sets of divergence-free modes are computed based on domain geometry. The first set accounts for flow through ``truncation boundaries'', and the second set of modes has no-slip/no-penetration conditions imposed on all boundaries. The modes are calculated by minimizing the velocity gradient throughout the domain while enforcing a divergence-free condition. The measured velocity field is then projected onto these modes using a least squares algorithm. This method is demonstrated on CFD simulations with artificial noise. Different degrees of noise and different numbers of modes are tested to reveal the capabilities of the approach. American Heart Association Award 17PRE33660202.

Curvature correction of retinal OCTs using graph-based geometry detection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kafieh, Raheleh; Rabbani, Hossein; Abramoff, Michael D.; Sonka, Milan

2013-05-01

In this paper, we present a new algorithm as an enhancement and preprocessing step for acquired optical coherence tomography (OCT) images of the retina. The proposed method is composed of two steps, first of which is a denoising algorithm with wavelet diffusion based on a circular symmetric Laplacian model, and the second part can be described in terms of graph-based geometry detection and curvature correction according to the hyper-reflective complex layer in the retina. The proposed denoising algorithm showed an improvement of contrast-to-noise ratio from 0.89 to 1.49 and an increase of signal-to-noise ratio (OCT image SNR) from 18.27 to 30.43 dB. By applying the proposed method for estimation of the interpolated curve using a full automatic method, the mean ± SD unsigned border positioning error was calculated for normal and abnormal cases. The error values of 2.19 ± 1.25 and 8.53 ± 3.76 µm were detected for 200 randomly selected slices without pathological curvature and 50 randomly selected slices with pathological curvature, respectively. The important aspect of this algorithm is its ability in detection of curvature in strongly pathological images that surpasses previously introduced methods; the method is also fast, compared to the relatively low speed of similar methods.

Estimation of surface curvature from full-field shape data using principal component analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sharma, Sameer; Vinuchakravarthy, S.; Subramanian, S. J.

2017-01-01

Three-dimensional digital image correlation (3D-DIC) is a popular image-based experimental technique for estimating surface shape, displacements and strains of deforming objects. In this technique, a calibrated stereo rig is used to obtain and stereo-match pairs of images of the object of interest from which the shapes of the imaged surface are then computed using the calibration parameters of the rig. Displacements are obtained by performing an additional temporal correlation of the shapes obtained at various stages of deformation and strains by smoothing and numerically differentiating the displacement data. Since strains are of primary importance in solid mechanics, significant efforts have been put into computation of strains from the measured displacement fields; however, much less attention has been paid to date to computation of curvature from the measured 3D surfaces. In this work, we address this gap by proposing a new method of computing curvature from full-field shape measurements using principal component analysis (PCA) along the lines of a similar work recently proposed to measure strains (Grama and Subramanian 2014 Exp. Mech. 54 913-33). PCA is a multivariate analysis tool that is widely used to reveal relationships between a large number of variables, reduce dimensionality and achieve significant denoising. This technique is applied here to identify dominant principal components in the shape fields measured by 3D-DIC and these principal components are then differentiated systematically to obtain the first and second fundamental forms used in the curvature calculation. The proposed method is first verified using synthetically generated noisy surfaces and then validated experimentally on some real world objects with known ground-truth curvatures.

Communication in a noisy environment: Perception of one's own voice and speech enhancement

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Le Cocq, Cecile

Workers in noisy industrial environments are often confronted to communication problems. Lost of workers complain about not being able to communicate easily with their coworkers when they wear hearing protectors. In consequence, they tend to remove their protectors, which expose them to the risk of hearing loss. In fact this communication problem is a double one: first the hearing protectors modify one's own voice perception; second they interfere with understanding speech from others. This double problem is examined in this thesis. When wearing hearing protectors, the modification of one's own voice perception is partly due to the occlusion effect which is produced when an earplug is inserted in the car canal. This occlusion effect has two main consequences: first the physiological noises in low frequencies are better perceived, second the perception of one's own voice is modified. In order to have a better understanding of this phenomenon, the literature results are analyzed systematically, and a new method to quantify the occlusion effect is developed. Instead of stimulating the skull with a bone vibrator or asking the subject to speak as is usually done in the literature, it has been decided to excite the buccal cavity with an acoustic wave. The experiment has been designed in such a way that the acoustic wave which excites the buccal cavity does not excite the external car or the rest of the body directly. The measurement of the hearing threshold in open and occluded car has been used to quantify the subjective occlusion effect for an acoustic wave in the buccal cavity. These experimental results as well as those reported in the literature have lead to a better understanding of the occlusion effect and an evaluation of the role of each internal path from the acoustic source to the internal car. The speech intelligibility from others is altered by both the high sound levels of noisy industrial environments and the speech signal attenuation due to hearing protectors. A possible solution to this problem is to denoise the speech signal and transmit it under the hearing protector. Lots of denoising techniques are available and are often used for denoising speech in telecommunication. In the framework of this thesis, denoising by wavelet thresholding is considered. A first study on "classical" wavelet denoising technics is conducted in order to evaluate their performance in noisy industrial environments. The tested speech signals are altered by industrial noises according to a wide range of signal to noise ratios. The speech denoised signals are evaluated with four criteria. A large database is obtained and analyzed with a selection algorithm which has been designed for this purpose. This first study has lead to the identification of the influence from the different parameters of the wavelet denoising method on its quality and has identified the "classical" method which has given the best performances in terms of denoising quality. This first study has also generated ideas for designing a new thresholding rule suitable for speech wavelet denoising in an industrial noisy environment. In a second study, this new thresholding rule is presented and evaluated. Its performances are better than the "classical" method found in the first study when the signal to noise ratio from the speech signal is between --10 dB and 15 dB.

TH-E-18A-01: Developments in Monte Carlo Methods for Medical Imaging

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Badal, A; Zbijewski, W; Bolch, W

Monte Carlo simulation methods are widely used in medical physics research and are starting to be implemented in clinical applications such as radiation therapy planning systems. Monte Carlo simulations offer the capability to accurately estimate quantities of interest that are challenging to measure experimentally while taking into account the realistic anatomy of an individual patient. Traditionally, practical application of Monte Carlo simulation codes in diagnostic imaging was limited by the need for large computational resources or long execution times. However, recent advancements in high-performance computing hardware, combined with a new generation of Monte Carlo simulation algorithms and novel postprocessing methods,more » are allowing for the computation of relevant imaging parameters of interest such as patient organ doses and scatter-to-primaryratios in radiographic projections in just a few seconds using affordable computational resources. Programmable Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), for example, provide a convenient, affordable platform for parallelized Monte Carlo executions that yield simulation times on the order of 10{sup 7} xray/ s. Even with GPU acceleration, however, Monte Carlo simulation times can be prohibitive for routine clinical practice. To reduce simulation times further, variance reduction techniques can be used to alter the probabilistic models underlying the x-ray tracking process, resulting in lower variance in the results without biasing the estimates. Other complementary strategies for further reductions in computation time are denoising of the Monte Carlo estimates and estimating (scoring) the quantity of interest at a sparse set of sampling locations (e.g. at a small number of detector pixels in a scatter simulation) followed by interpolation. Beyond reduction of the computational resources required for performing Monte Carlo simulations in medical imaging, the use of accurate representations of patient anatomy is crucial to the virtual generation of medical images and accurate estimation of radiation dose and other imaging parameters. For this, detailed computational phantoms of the patient anatomy must be utilized and implemented within the radiation transport code. Computational phantoms presently come in one of three format types, and in one of four morphometric categories. Format types include stylized (mathematical equation-based), voxel (segmented CT/MR images), and hybrid (NURBS and polygon mesh surfaces). Morphometric categories include reference (small library of phantoms by age at 50th height/weight percentile), patient-dependent (larger library of phantoms at various combinations of height/weight percentiles), patient-sculpted (phantoms altered to match the patient's unique outer body contour), and finally, patient-specific (an exact representation of the patient with respect to both body contour and internal anatomy). The existence and availability of these phantoms represents a very important advance for the simulation of realistic medical imaging applications using Monte Carlo methods. New Monte Carlo simulation codes need to be thoroughly validated before they can be used to perform novel research. Ideally, the validation process would involve comparison of results with those of an experimental measurement, but accurate replication of experimental conditions can be very challenging. It is very common to validate new Monte Carlo simulations by replicating previously published simulation results of similar experiments. This process, however, is commonly problematic due to the lack of sufficient information in the published reports of previous work so as to be able to replicate the simulation in detail. To aid in this process, the AAPM Task Group 195 prepared a report in which six different imaging research experiments commonly performed using Monte Carlo simulations are described and their results provided. The simulation conditions of all six cases are provided in full detail, with all necessary data on material composition, source, geometry, scoring and other parameters provided. The results of these simulations when performed with the four most common publicly available Monte Carlo packages are also provided in tabular form. The Task Group 195 Report will be useful for researchers needing to validate their Monte Carlo work, and for trainees needing to learn Monte Carlo simulation methods. In this symposium we will review the recent advancements in highperformance computing hardware enabling the reduction in computational resources needed for Monte Carlo simulations in medical imaging. We will review variance reduction techniques commonly applied in Monte Carlo simulations of medical imaging systems and present implementation strategies for efficient combination of these techniques with GPU acceleration. Trade-offs involved in Monte Carlo acceleration by means of denoising and “sparse sampling” will be discussed. A method for rapid scatter correction in cone-beam CT (<5 min/scan) will be presented as an illustration of the simulation speeds achievable with optimized Monte Carlo simulations. We will also discuss the development, availability, and capability of the various combinations of computational phantoms for Monte Carlo simulation of medical imaging systems. Finally, we will review some examples of experimental validation of Monte Carlo simulations and will present the AAPM Task Group 195 Report. Learning Objectives: Describe the advances in hardware available for performing Monte Carlo simulations in high performance computing environments. Explain variance reduction, denoising and sparse sampling techniques available for reduction of computational time needed for Monte Carlo simulations of medical imaging. List and compare the computational anthropomorphic phantoms currently available for more accurate assessment of medical imaging parameters in Monte Carlo simulations. Describe experimental methods used for validation of Monte Carlo simulations in medical imaging. Describe the AAPM Task Group 195 Report and its use for validation and teaching of Monte Carlo simulations in medical imaging.« less

The effects of variations in parameters and algorithm choices on calculated radiomics feature values: initial investigations and comparisons to feature variability across CT image acquisition conditions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Emaminejad, Nastaran; Wahi-Anwar, Muhammad; Hoffman, John; Kim, Grace H.; Brown, Matthew S.; McNitt-Gray, Michael

2018-02-01

Translation of radiomics into clinical practice requires confidence in its interpretations. This may be obtained via understanding and overcoming the limitations in current radiomic approaches. Currently there is a lack of standardization in radiomic feature extraction. In this study we examined a few factors that are potential sources of inconsistency in characterizing lung nodules, such as 1)different choices of parameters and algorithms in feature calculation, 2)two CT image dose levels, 3)different CT reconstruction algorithms (WFBP, denoised WFBP, and Iterative). We investigated the effect of variation of these factors on entropy textural feature of lung nodules. CT images of 19 lung nodules identified from our lung cancer screening program were identified by a CAD tool and contours provided. The radiomics features were extracted by calculating 36 GLCM based and 4 histogram based entropy features in addition to 2 intensity based features. A robustness index was calculated across different image acquisition parameters to illustrate the reproducibility of features. Most GLCM based and all histogram based entropy features were robust across two CT image dose levels. Denoising of images slightly improved robustness of some entropy features at WFBP. Iterative reconstruction resulted in improvement of robustness in a fewer times and caused more variation in entropy feature values and their robustness. Within different choices of parameters and algorithms texture features showed a wide range of variation, as much as 75% for individual nodules. Results indicate the need for harmonization of feature calculations and identification of optimum parameters and algorithms in a radiomics study.

Hardware Design and Implementation of a Wavelet De-Noising Procedure for Medical Signal Preprocessing

PubMed Central

Chen, Szi-Wen; Chen, Yuan-Ho

2015-01-01

In this paper, a discrete wavelet transform (DWT) based de-noising with its applications into the noise reduction for medical signal preprocessing is introduced. This work focuses on the hardware realization of a real-time wavelet de-noising procedure. The proposed de-noising circuit mainly consists of three modules: a DWT, a thresholding, and an inverse DWT (IDWT) modular circuits. We also proposed a novel adaptive thresholding scheme and incorporated it into our wavelet de-noising procedure. Performance was then evaluated on both the architectural designs of the software and. In addition, the de-noising circuit was also implemented by downloading the Verilog codes to a field programmable gate array (FPGA) based platform so that its ability in noise reduction may be further validated in actual practice. Simulation experiment results produced by applying a set of simulated noise-contaminated electrocardiogram (ECG) signals into the de-noising circuit showed that the circuit could not only desirably meet the requirement of real-time processing, but also achieve satisfactory performance for noise reduction, while the sharp features of the ECG signals can be well preserved. The proposed de-noising circuit was further synthesized using the Synopsys Design Compiler with an Artisan Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC, Hsinchu, Taiwan) 40 nm standard cell library. The integrated circuit (IC) synthesis simulation results showed that the proposed design can achieve a clock frequency of 200 MHz and the power consumption was only 17.4 mW, when operated at 200 MHz. PMID:26501290

Hardware design and implementation of a wavelet de-noising procedure for medical signal preprocessing.

PubMed

Chen, Szi-Wen; Chen, Yuan-Ho

2015-10-16

In this paper, a discrete wavelet transform (DWT) based de-noising with its applications into the noise reduction for medical signal preprocessing is introduced. This work focuses on the hardware realization of a real-time wavelet de-noising procedure. The proposed de-noising circuit mainly consists of three modules: a DWT, a thresholding, and an inverse DWT (IDWT) modular circuits. We also proposed a novel adaptive thresholding scheme and incorporated it into our wavelet de-noising procedure. Performance was then evaluated on both the architectural designs of the software and. In addition, the de-noising circuit was also implemented by downloading the Verilog codes to a field programmable gate array (FPGA) based platform so that its ability in noise reduction may be further validated in actual practice. Simulation experiment results produced by applying a set of simulated noise-contaminated electrocardiogram (ECG) signals into the de-noising circuit showed that the circuit could not only desirably meet the requirement of real-time processing, but also achieve satisfactory performance for noise reduction, while the sharp features of the ECG signals can be well preserved. The proposed de-noising circuit was further synthesized using the Synopsys Design Compiler with an Artisan Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC, Hsinchu, Taiwan) 40 nm standard cell library. The integrated circuit (IC) synthesis simulation results showed that the proposed design can achieve a clock frequency of 200 MHz and the power consumption was only 17.4 mW, when operated at 200 MHz.

Automated brain tumor segmentation in magnetic resonance imaging based on sliding-window technique and symmetry analysis.

PubMed

Lian, Yanyun; Song, Zhijian

2014-01-01

Brain tumor segmentation from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an important step toward surgical planning, treatment planning, monitoring of therapy. However, manual tumor segmentation commonly used in clinic is time-consuming and challenging, and none of the existed automated methods are highly robust, reliable and efficient in clinic application. An accurate and automated tumor segmentation method has been developed for brain tumor segmentation that will provide reproducible and objective results close to manual segmentation results. Based on the symmetry of human brain, we employed sliding-window technique and correlation coefficient to locate the tumor position. At first, the image to be segmented was normalized, rotated, denoised, and bisected. Subsequently, through vertical and horizontal sliding-windows technique in turn, that is, two windows in the left and the right part of brain image moving simultaneously pixel by pixel in two parts of brain image, along with calculating of correlation coefficient of two windows, two windows with minimal correlation coefficient were obtained, and the window with bigger average gray value is the location of tumor and the pixel with biggest gray value is the locating point of tumor. At last, the segmentation threshold was decided by the average gray value of the pixels in the square with center at the locating point and 10 pixels of side length, and threshold segmentation and morphological operations were used to acquire the final tumor region. The method was evaluated on 3D FSPGR brain MR images of 10 patients. As a result, the average ratio of correct location was 93.4% for 575 slices containing tumor, the average Dice similarity coefficient was 0.77 for one scan, and the average time spent on one scan was 40 seconds. An fully automated, simple and efficient segmentation method for brain tumor is proposed and promising for future clinic use. Correlation coefficient is a new and effective feature for tumor location.

Study on De-noising Technology of Radar Life Signal

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yang, Xiu-Fang; Wang, Lian-Huan; Ma, Jiang-Fei; Wang, Pei-Pei

2016-05-01

Radar detection is a kind of novel life detection technology, which can be applied to medical monitoring, anti-terrorism and disaster relief street fighting, etc. As the radar life signal is very weak, it is often submerged in the noise. Because of non-stationary and randomness of these clutter signals, it is necessary to denoise efficiently before extracting and separating the useful signal. This paper improves the radar life signal's theoretical model of the continuous wave, does de-noising processing by introducing lifting wavelet transform and determine the best threshold function through comparing the de-noising effects of different threshold functions. The result indicates that both SNR and MSE of the signal are better than the traditional ones by introducing lifting wave transform and using a new improved soft threshold function de-noising method..

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Niu, T; Dong, X; Petrongolo, M

Purpose: Dual energy CT (DECT) imaging plays an important role in advanced imaging applications due to its material decomposition capability. Direct decomposition via matrix inversion suffers from significant degradation of image signal-to-noise ratios, which reduces clinical value. Existing de-noising algorithms achieve suboptimal performance since they suppress image noise either before or after the decomposition and do not fully explore the noise statistical properties of the decomposition process. We propose an iterative image-domain decomposition method for noise suppression in DECT, using the full variance-covariance matrix of the decomposed images. Methods: The proposed algorithm is formulated in the form of least-square estimationmore » with smoothness regularization. It includes the inverse of the estimated variance-covariance matrix of the decomposed images as the penalty weight in the least-square term. Performance is evaluated using an evaluation phantom (Catphan 600) and an anthropomorphic head phantom. Results are compared to those generated using direct matrix inversion with no noise suppression, a de-noising method applied on the decomposed images, and an existing algorithm with similar formulation but with an edge-preserving regularization term. Results: On the Catphan phantom, our method retains the same spatial resolution as the CT images before decomposition while reducing the noise standard deviation of decomposed images by over 98%. The other methods either degrade spatial resolution or achieve less low-contrast detectability. Also, our method yields lower electron density measurement error than direct matrix inversion and reduces error variation by over 97%. On the head phantom, it reduces the noise standard deviation of decomposed images by over 97% without blurring the sinus structures. Conclusion: We propose an iterative image-domain decomposition method for DECT. The method combines noise suppression and material decomposition into an iterative process and achieves both goals simultaneously. The proposed algorithm shows superior performance on noise suppression with high image spatial resolution and low-contrast detectability. This work is supported by a Varian MRA grant.« less

Data analysis of multi-laser standoff spectral identification of chemical and biological compounds

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Farahi, R.; Zaharov, V.; Tetard, L.; Thundat, T.; Passian, A.

2013-06-01

With the availability of tunable broadband coherent sources that emit mid-infrared radiation with well-defined beam characteristics, spectroscopies that were traditionally not practical for standoff detection1 or for development of miniaturized infrared detectors2, 3 have renewed interest. While obtaining compositional information for objects from a distance remains a major challenge in chemical and biological sensing, recently we demonstrated that capitalizing on mid-infrared excitation of target molecules by using quantum cascade lasers and invoking a pump probe scheme can provide spectral fingerprints of substances from a variable standoff distance.3 However, the standoff data is typically associated with random fluctuations that can corrupt the fine spectral features and useful data. To process the data from standoff experiments toward better recognition we consider and apply two types of denoising techniques, namely, spectral analysis and Karhunen-Loeve Transform (KLT). Using these techniques, infrared spectral data have been effectively improved. The result of the analysis illustrates that KLT can be adapted as a powerful data denoising tool for the presented pump-probe infrared standoff spectroscopy.

Computer-Aided Diagnosis with Deep Learning Architecture: Applications to Breast Lesions in US Images and Pulmonary Nodules in CT Scans

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cheng, Jie-Zhi; Ni, Dong; Chou, Yi-Hong; Qin, Jing; Tiu, Chui-Mei; Chang, Yeun-Chung; Huang, Chiun-Sheng; Shen, Dinggang; Chen, Chung-Ming

2016-04-01

This paper performs a comprehensive study on the deep-learning-based computer-aided diagnosis (CADx) for the differential diagnosis of benign and malignant nodules/lesions by avoiding the potential errors caused by inaccurate image processing results (e.g., boundary segmentation), as well as the classification bias resulting from a less robust feature set, as involved in most conventional CADx algorithms. Specifically, the stacked denoising auto-encoder (SDAE) is exploited on the two CADx applications for the differentiation of breast ultrasound lesions and lung CT nodules. The SDAE architecture is well equipped with the automatic feature exploration mechanism and noise tolerance advantage, and hence may be suitable to deal with the intrinsically noisy property of medical image data from various imaging modalities. To show the outperformance of SDAE-based CADx over the conventional scheme, two latest conventional CADx algorithms are implemented for comparison. 10 times of 10-fold cross-validations are conducted to illustrate the efficacy of the SDAE-based CADx algorithm. The experimental results show the significant performance boost by the SDAE-based CADx algorithm over the two conventional methods, suggesting that deep learning techniques can potentially change the design paradigm of the CADx systems without the need of explicit design and selection of problem-oriented features.

Computer-Aided Diagnosis with Deep Learning Architecture: Applications to Breast Lesions in US Images and Pulmonary Nodules in CT Scans.

PubMed

Cheng, Jie-Zhi; Ni, Dong; Chou, Yi-Hong; Qin, Jing; Tiu, Chui-Mei; Chang, Yeun-Chung; Huang, Chiun-Sheng; Shen, Dinggang; Chen, Chung-Ming

2016-04-15

This paper performs a comprehensive study on the deep-learning-based computer-aided diagnosis (CADx) for the differential diagnosis of benign and malignant nodules/lesions by avoiding the potential errors caused by inaccurate image processing results (e.g., boundary segmentation), as well as the classification bias resulting from a less robust feature set, as involved in most conventional CADx algorithms. Specifically, the stacked denoising auto-encoder (SDAE) is exploited on the two CADx applications for the differentiation of breast ultrasound lesions and lung CT nodules. The SDAE architecture is well equipped with the automatic feature exploration mechanism and noise tolerance advantage, and hence may be suitable to deal with the intrinsically noisy property of medical image data from various imaging modalities. To show the outperformance of SDAE-based CADx over the conventional scheme, two latest conventional CADx algorithms are implemented for comparison. 10 times of 10-fold cross-validations are conducted to illustrate the efficacy of the SDAE-based CADx algorithm. The experimental results show the significant performance boost by the SDAE-based CADx algorithm over the two conventional methods, suggesting that deep learning techniques can potentially change the design paradigm of the CADx systems without the need of explicit design and selection of problem-oriented features.

Computer-Aided Diagnosis with Deep Learning Architecture: Applications to Breast Lesions in US Images and Pulmonary Nodules in CT Scans

PubMed Central

Cheng, Jie-Zhi; Ni, Dong; Chou, Yi-Hong; Qin, Jing; Tiu, Chui-Mei; Chang, Yeun-Chung; Huang, Chiun-Sheng; Shen, Dinggang; Chen, Chung-Ming

2016-01-01

This paper performs a comprehensive study on the deep-learning-based computer-aided diagnosis (CADx) for the differential diagnosis of benign and malignant nodules/lesions by avoiding the potential errors caused by inaccurate image processing results (e.g., boundary segmentation), as well as the classification bias resulting from a less robust feature set, as involved in most conventional CADx algorithms. Specifically, the stacked denoising auto-encoder (SDAE) is exploited on the two CADx applications for the differentiation of breast ultrasound lesions and lung CT nodules. The SDAE architecture is well equipped with the automatic feature exploration mechanism and noise tolerance advantage, and hence may be suitable to deal with the intrinsically noisy property of medical image data from various imaging modalities. To show the outperformance of SDAE-based CADx over the conventional scheme, two latest conventional CADx algorithms are implemented for comparison. 10 times of 10-fold cross-validations are conducted to illustrate the efficacy of the SDAE-based CADx algorithm. The experimental results show the significant performance boost by the SDAE-based CADx algorithm over the two conventional methods, suggesting that deep learning techniques can potentially change the design paradigm of the CADx systems without the need of explicit design and selection of problem-oriented features. PMID:27079888

The pre-image problem in kernel methods.

PubMed

Kwok, James Tin-yau; Tsang, Ivor Wai-hung

2004-11-01

In this paper, we address the problem of finding the pre-image of a feature vector in the feature space induced by a kernel. This is of central importance in some kernel applications, such as on using kernel principal component analysis (PCA) for image denoising. Unlike the traditional method which relies on nonlinear optimization, our proposed method directly finds the location of the pre-image based on distance constraints in the feature space. It is noniterative, involves only linear algebra and does not suffer from numerical instability or local minimum problems. Evaluations on performing kernel PCA and kernel clustering on the USPS data set show much improved performance.

Noninvasive Fetal Electrocardiography Part II: Segmented-Beat Modulation Method for Signal Denoising

PubMed Central

Agostinelli, Angela; Sbrollini, Agnese; Burattini, Luca; Fioretti, Sandro; Di Nardo, Francesco; Burattini, Laura

2017-01-01

Background: Fetal well-being evaluation may be accomplished by monitoring cardiac activity through fetal electrocardiography. Direct fetal electrocardiography (acquired through scalp electrodes) is the gold standard but its invasiveness limits its clinical applicability. Instead, clinical use of indirect fetal electrocardiography (acquired through abdominal electrodes) is limited by its poor signal quality. Objective: Aim of this study was to evaluate the suitability of the Segmented-Beat Modulation Method to denoise indirect fetal electrocardiograms in order to achieve a signal-quality at least comparable to the direct ones. Method: Direct and indirect recordings, simultaneously acquired from 5 pregnant women during labor, were filtered with the Segmented-Beat Modulation Method and correlated in order to assess their morphological correspondence. Signal-to-noise ratio was used to quantify their quality. Results: Amplitude was higher in direct than indirect fetal electrocardiograms (median:104 µV vs. 22 µV; P=7.66·10-4), whereas noise was comparable (median:70 µV vs. 49 µV, P=0.45). Moreover, fetal electrocardiogram amplitude was significantly higher than affecting noise in direct recording (P=3.17·10-2) and significantly in indirect recording (P=1.90·10-3). Consequently, signal-to-noise ratio was initially higher for direct than indirect recordings (median:3.3 dB vs. -2.3 dB; P=3.90·10-3), but became lower after denoising of indirect ones (median:9.6 dB; P=9.84·10-4). Eventually, direct and indirect recordings were highly correlated (median: ρ=0.78; P<10-208), indicating that the two electrocardiograms were morphologically equivalent. Conclusion: Segmented-Beat Modulation Method is particularly useful for denoising of indirect fetal electrocardiogram and may contribute to the spread of this noninvasive technique in the clinical practice. PMID:28567129

Combined Tensor Fitting and TV Regularization in Diffusion Tensor Imaging Based on a Riemannian Manifold Approach.

PubMed

Baust, Maximilian; Weinmann, Andreas; Wieczorek, Matthias; Lasser, Tobias; Storath, Martin; Navab, Nassir

2016-08-01

In this paper, we consider combined TV denoising and diffusion tensor fitting in DTI using the affine-invariant Riemannian metric on the space of diffusion tensors. Instead of first fitting the diffusion tensors, and then denoising them, we define a suitable TV type energy functional which incorporates the measured DWIs (using an inverse problem setup) and which measures the nearness of neighboring tensors in the manifold. To approach this functional, we propose generalized forward- backward splitting algorithms which combine an explicit and several implicit steps performed on a decomposition of the functional. We validate the performance of the derived algorithms on synthetic and real DTI data. In particular, we work on real 3D data. To our knowledge, the present paper describes the first approach to TV regularization in a combined manifold and inverse problem setup.

A proximity algorithm accelerated by Gauss-Seidel iterations for L1/TV denoising models

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Qia; Micchelli, Charles A.; Shen, Lixin; Xu, Yuesheng

2012-09-01

Our goal in this paper is to improve the computational performance of the proximity algorithms for the L1/TV denoising model. This leads us to a new characterization of all solutions to the L1/TV model via fixed-point equations expressed in terms of the proximity operators. Based upon this observation we develop an algorithm for solving the model and establish its convergence. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can be accelerated through the use of the componentwise Gauss-Seidel iteration so that the CPU time consumed is significantly reduced. Numerical experiments using the proposed algorithm for impulsive noise removal are included, with a comparison to three recently developed algorithms. The numerical results show that while the proposed algorithm enjoys a high quality of the restored images, as the other three known algorithms do, it performs significantly better in terms of computational efficiency measured in the CPU time consumed.

An Improved DOA Estimation Approach Using Coarray Interpolation and Matrix Denoising

PubMed Central

Guo, Muran; Chen, Tao; Wang, Ben

2017-01-01

Co-prime arrays can estimate the directions of arrival (DOAs) of O(MN) sources with O(M+N) sensors, and are convenient to analyze due to their closed-form expression for the locations of virtual lags. However, the number of degrees of freedom is limited due to the existence of holes in difference coarrays if subspace-based algorithms such as the spatial smoothing multiple signal classification (MUSIC) algorithm are utilized. To address this issue, techniques such as positive definite Toeplitz completion and array interpolation have been proposed in the literature. Another factor that compromises the accuracy of DOA estimation is the limitation of the number of snapshots. Coarray-based processing is particularly sensitive to the discrepancy between the sample covariance matrix and the ideal covariance matrix due to the finite number of snapshots. In this paper, coarray interpolation based on matrix completion (MC) followed by a denoising operation is proposed to detect more sources with a higher accuracy. The effectiveness of the proposed method is based on the capability of MC to fill in holes in the virtual sensors and that of MC denoising operation to reduce the perturbation in the sample covariance matrix. The results of numerical simulations verify the superiority of the proposed approach. PMID:28509886

An Improved DOA Estimation Approach Using Coarray Interpolation and Matrix Denoising.

PubMed

Guo, Muran; Chen, Tao; Wang, Ben

2017-05-16

Co-prime arrays can estimate the directions of arrival (DOAs) of O ( M N ) sources with O ( M + N ) sensors, and are convenient to analyze due to their closed-form expression for the locations of virtual lags. However, the number of degrees of freedom is limited due to the existence of holes in difference coarrays if subspace-based algorithms such as the spatial smoothing multiple signal classification (MUSIC) algorithm are utilized. To address this issue, techniques such as positive definite Toeplitz completion and array interpolation have been proposed in the literature. Another factor that compromises the accuracy of DOA estimation is the limitation of the number of snapshots. Coarray-based processing is particularly sensitive to the discrepancy between the sample covariance matrix and the ideal covariance matrix due to the finite number of snapshots. In this paper, coarray interpolation based on matrix completion (MC) followed by a denoising operation is proposed to detect more sources with a higher accuracy. The effectiveness of the proposed method is based on the capability of MC to fill in holes in the virtual sensors and that of MC denoising operation to reduce the perturbation in the sample covariance matrix. The results of numerical simulations verify the superiority of the proposed approach.

Diagnostic analysis of liver B ultrasonic texture features based on LM neural network

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chi, Qingyun; Hua, Hu; Liu, Menglin; Jiang, Xiuying

2017-03-01

In this study, B ultrasound images of 124 benign and malignant patients were randomly selected as the study objects. The B ultrasound images of the liver were treated by enhanced de-noising. By constructing the gray level co-occurrence matrix which reflects the information of each angle, Principal Component Analysis of 22 texture features were extracted and combined with LM neural network for diagnosis and classification. Experimental results show that this method is a rapid and effective diagnostic method for liver imaging, which provides a quantitative basis for clinical diagnosis of liver diseases.

Wavelet based de-noising of breath air absorption spectra profiles for improved classification by principal component analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kistenev, Yu. V.; Shapovalov, A. V.; Borisov, A. V.; Vrazhnov, D. A.; Nikolaev, V. V.; Nikiforova, O. Yu.

2015-11-01

The comparison results of different mother wavelets used for de-noising of model and experimental data which were presented by profiles of absorption spectra of exhaled air are presented. The impact of wavelets de-noising on classification quality made by principal component analysis are also discussed.

Design, development and testing of a low-cost sEMG system and its use in recording muscle activity in human gait.

PubMed

Supuk, Tamara Grujic; Skelin, Ana Kuzmanic; Cic, Maja

2014-05-07

Surface electromyography (sEMG) is an important measurement technique used in biomechanical, rehabilitation and sport environments. In this article the design, development and testing of a low-cost wearable sEMG system are described. The hardware architecture consists of a two-cascade small-sized bioamplifier with a total gain of 2,000 and band-pass of 3 to 500 Hz. The sampling frequency of the system is 1,000 Hz. Since real measured EMG signals are usually corrupted by various types of noises (motion artifacts, white noise and electromagnetic noise present at 50 Hz and higher harmonics), we have tested several denoising techniques, both on artificial and measured EMG signals. Results showed that a wavelet-based technique implementing Daubechies5 wavelet and soft sqtwolog thresholding is the most appropriate for EMG signals denoising. To test the system performance, EMG activities of six dominant muscles of ten healthy subjects during gait were measured (gluteus maximus, biceps femoris, sartorius, rectus femoris, tibialis anterior and medial gastrocnemius). The obtained EMG envelopes presented against the duration of gait cycle were compared favourably with the EMG data available in the literature, suggesting that the proposed system is suitable for a wide range of applications in biomechanics.

Design, Development and Testing of a Low-Cost sEMG System and Its Use in Recording Muscle Activity in Human Gait

PubMed Central

Supuk, Tamara Grujic; Skelin, Ana Kuzmanic; Cic, Maja

2014-01-01

Surface electromyography (sEMG) is an important measurement technique used in biomechanical, rehabilitation and sport environments. In this article the design, development and testing of a low-cost wearable sEMG system are described. The hardware architecture consists of a two-cascade small-sized bioamplifier with a total gain of 2,000 and band-pass of 3 to 500 Hz. The sampling frequency of the system is 1,000 Hz. Since real measured EMG signals are usually corrupted by various types of noises (motion artifacts, white noise and electromagnetic noise present at 50 Hz and higher harmonics), we have tested several denoising techniques, both on artificial and measured EMG signals. Results showed that a wavelet—based technique implementing Daubechies5 wavelet and soft sqtwolog thresholding is the most appropriate for EMG signals denoising. To test the system performance, EMG activities of six dominant muscles of ten healthy subjects during gait were measured (gluteus maximus, biceps femoris, sartorius, rectus femoris, tibialis anterior and medial gastrocnemius). The obtained EMG envelopes presented against the duration of gait cycle were compared favourably with the EMG data available in the literature, suggesting that the proposed system is suitable for a wide range of applications in biomechanics. PMID:24811078

A robust hidden Markov Gauss mixture vector quantizer for a noisy source.

PubMed

Pyun, Kyungsuk Peter; Lim, Johan; Gray, Robert M

2009-07-01

Noise is ubiquitous in real life and changes image acquisition, communication, and processing characteristics in an uncontrolled manner. Gaussian noise and Salt and Pepper noise, in particular, are prevalent in noisy communication channels, camera and scanner sensors, and medical MRI images. It is not unusual for highly sophisticated image processing algorithms developed for clean images to malfunction when used on noisy images. For example, hidden Markov Gauss mixture models (HMGMM) have been shown to perform well in image segmentation applications, but they are quite sensitive to image noise. We propose a modified HMGMM procedure specifically designed to improve performance in the presence of noise. The key feature of the proposed procedure is the adjustment of covariance matrices in Gauss mixture vector quantizer codebooks to minimize an overall minimum discrimination information distortion (MDI). In adjusting covariance matrices, we expand or shrink their elements based on the noisy image. While most results reported in the literature assume a particular noise type, we propose a framework without assuming particular noise characteristics. Without denoising the corrupted source, we apply our method directly to the segmentation of noisy sources. We apply the proposed procedure to the segmentation of aerial images with Salt and Pepper noise and with independent Gaussian noise, and we compare our results with those of the median filter restoration method and the blind deconvolution-based method, respectively. We show that our procedure has better performance than image restoration-based techniques and closely matches to the performance of HMGMM for clean images in terms of both visual segmentation results and error rate.

Brain-machine interfaces for controlling lower-limb powered robotic systems.

PubMed

He, Yongtian; Eguren, David; Azorín, José M; Grossman, Robert G; Luu, Trieu Phat; Contreras-Vidal, Jose L

2018-04-01

Lower-limb, powered robotics systems such as exoskeletons and orthoses have emerged as novel robotic interventions to assist or rehabilitate people with walking disabilities. These devices are generally controlled by certain physical maneuvers, for example pressing buttons or shifting body weight. Although effective, these control schemes are not what humans naturally use. The usability and clinical relevance of these robotics systems could be further enhanced by brain-machine interfaces (BMIs). A number of preliminary studies have been published on this topic, but a systematic understanding of the experimental design, tasks, and performance of BMI-exoskeleton systems for restoration of gait is lacking. To address this gap, we applied standard systematic review methodology for a literature search in PubMed and EMBASE databases and identified 11 studies involving BMI-robotics systems. The devices, user population, input and output of the BMIs and robot systems respectively, neural features, decoders, denoising techniques, and system performance were reviewed and compared. Results showed BMIs classifying walk versus stand tasks are the most common. The results also indicate that electroencephalography (EEG) is the only recording method for humans. Performance was not clearly presented in most of the studies. Several challenges were summarized, including EEG denoising, safety, responsiveness and others. We conclude that lower-body powered exoskeletons with automated gait intention detection based on BMIs open new possibilities in the assistance and rehabilitation fields, although the current performance, clinical benefits and several key challenging issues indicate that additional research and development is required to deploy these systems in the clinic and at home. Moreover, rigorous EEG denoising techniques, suitable performance metrics, consistent trial reporting, and more clinical trials are needed to advance the field.

Brain-machine interfaces for controlling lower-limb powered robotic systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

He, Yongtian; Eguren, David; Azorín, José M.; Grossman, Robert G.; Phat Luu, Trieu; Contreras-Vidal, Jose L.

2018-04-01

Objective. Lower-limb, powered robotics systems such as exoskeletons and orthoses have emerged as novel robotic interventions to assist or rehabilitate people with walking disabilities. These devices are generally controlled by certain physical maneuvers, for example pressing buttons or shifting body weight. Although effective, these control schemes are not what humans naturally use. The usability and clinical relevance of these robotics systems could be further enhanced by brain-machine interfaces (BMIs). A number of preliminary studies have been published on this topic, but a systematic understanding of the experimental design, tasks, and performance of BMI-exoskeleton systems for restoration of gait is lacking. Approach. To address this gap, we applied standard systematic review methodology for a literature search in PubMed and EMBASE databases and identified 11 studies involving BMI-robotics systems. The devices, user population, input and output of the BMIs and robot systems respectively, neural features, decoders, denoising techniques, and system performance were reviewed and compared. Main results. Results showed BMIs classifying walk versus stand tasks are the most common. The results also indicate that electroencephalography (EEG) is the only recording method for humans. Performance was not clearly presented in most of the studies. Several challenges were summarized, including EEG denoising, safety, responsiveness and others. Significance. We conclude that lower-body powered exoskeletons with automated gait intention detection based on BMIs open new possibilities in the assistance and rehabilitation fields, although the current performance, clinical benefits and several key challenging issues indicate that additional research and development is required to deploy these systems in the clinic and at home. Moreover, rigorous EEG denoising techniques, suitable performance metrics, consistent trial reporting, and more clinical trials are needed to advance the field.

Exploring the complementarity of THz pulse imaging and DCE-MRIs: Toward a unified multi-channel classification and a deep learning framework.

PubMed

Yin, X-X; Zhang, Y; Cao, J; Wu, J-L; Hadjiloucas, S

2016-12-01

We provide a comprehensive account of recent advances in biomedical image analysis and classification from two complementary imaging modalities: terahertz (THz) pulse imaging and dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI). The work aims to highlight underlining commonalities in both data structures so that a common multi-channel data fusion framework can be developed. Signal pre-processing in both datasets is discussed briefly taking into consideration advances in multi-resolution analysis and model based fractional order calculus system identification. Developments in statistical signal processing using principal component and independent component analysis are also considered. These algorithms have been developed independently by the THz-pulse imaging and DCE-MRI communities, and there is scope to place them in a common multi-channel framework to provide better software standardization at the pre-processing de-noising stage. A comprehensive discussion of feature selection strategies is also provided and the importance of preserving textural information is highlighted. Feature extraction and classification methods taking into consideration recent advances in support vector machine (SVM) and extreme learning machine (ELM) classifiers and their complex extensions are presented. An outlook on Clifford algebra classifiers and deep learning techniques suitable to both types of datasets is also provided. The work points toward the direction of developing a new unified multi-channel signal processing framework for biomedical image analysis that will explore synergies from both sensing modalities for inferring disease proliferation. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Multi-scale approaches for high-speed imaging and analysis of large neural populations

PubMed Central

Ahrens, Misha B.; Yuste, Rafael; Peterka, Darcy S.; Paninski, Liam

2017-01-01

Progress in modern neuroscience critically depends on our ability to observe the activity of large neuronal populations with cellular spatial and high temporal resolution. However, two bottlenecks constrain efforts towards fast imaging of large populations. First, the resulting large video data is challenging to analyze. Second, there is an explicit tradeoff between imaging speed, signal-to-noise, and field of view: with current recording technology we cannot image very large neuronal populations with simultaneously high spatial and temporal resolution. Here we describe multi-scale approaches for alleviating both of these bottlenecks. First, we show that spatial and temporal decimation techniques based on simple local averaging provide order-of-magnitude speedups in spatiotemporally demixing calcium video data into estimates of single-cell neural activity. Second, once the shapes of individual neurons have been identified at fine scale (e.g., after an initial phase of conventional imaging with standard temporal and spatial resolution), we find that the spatial/temporal resolution tradeoff shifts dramatically: after demixing we can accurately recover denoised fluorescence traces and deconvolved neural activity of each individual neuron from coarse scale data that has been spatially decimated by an order of magnitude. This offers a cheap method for compressing this large video data, and also implies that it is possible to either speed up imaging significantly, or to “zoom out” by a corresponding factor to image order-of-magnitude larger neuronal populations with minimal loss in accuracy or temporal resolution. PMID:28771570

Training-based descreening.

PubMed

Siddiqui, Hasib; Bouman, Charles A

2007-03-01

Conventional halftoning methods employed in electrophotographic printers tend to produce Moiré artifacts when used for printing images scanned from printed material, such as books and magazines. We present a novel approach for descreening color scanned documents aimed at providing an efficient solution to the Moiré problem in practical imaging devices, including copiers and multifunction printers. The algorithm works by combining two nonlinear image-processing techniques, resolution synthesis-based denoising (RSD), and modified smallest univalue segment assimilating nucleus (SUSAN) filtering. The RSD predictor is based on a stochastic image model whose parameters are optimized beforehand in a separate training procedure. Using the optimized parameters, RSD classifies the local window around the current pixel in the scanned image and applies filters optimized for the selected classes. The output of the RSD predictor is treated as a first-order estimate to the descreened image. The modified SUSAN filter uses the output of RSD for performing an edge-preserving smoothing on the raw scanned data and produces the final output of the descreening algorithm. Our method does not require any knowledge of the screening method, such as the screen frequency or dither matrix coefficients, that produced the printed original. The proposed scheme not only suppresses the Moiré artifacts, but, in addition, can be trained with intrinsic sharpening for deblurring scanned documents. Finally, once optimized for a periodic clustered-dot halftoning method, the same algorithm can be used to inverse halftone scanned images containing stochastic error diffusion halftone noise.

Optical coherence tomography of the prostate nerves

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chitchian, Shahab

Preservation of the cavernous nerves during prostate cancer surgery is critical in preserving a man's ability to have spontaneous erections following surgery. These microscopic nerves course along the surface of the prostate within a few millimeters of the prostate capsule, and they vary in size and location from one patient to another, making preservation of the nerves difficult during dissection and removal of a cancerous prostate gland. These observations may explain in part the wide variability in reported sexual potency rates (9--86%) following prostate cancer surgery. Any technology capable of providing improved identification, imaging, and visualization of the cavernous nerves during prostate cancer surgery would be of great assistance in improving sexual function after surgery, and result in direct patient benefit. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a noninvasive optical imaging technique capable of performing high-resolution cross-sectional in vivo and in situ imaging of microstructures in biological tissues. OCT imaging of the cavernous nerves in the rat and human prostate has recently been demonstrated. However, improvements in the OCT system and the quality of the images for identification of the cavernous nerves is necessary before clinical use. The following chapters describe complementary approaches to improving identification and imaging of the cavernous nerves during OCT of the prostate gland. After the introduction to OCT imaging of the prostate gland, the optimal wavelength for deep imaging of the prostate is studied in Chapter 2. An oblique-incidence single point measurement technique using a normal-detector scanning system was implemented to determine the absorption and reduced scattering coefficients, mua and m's , of fresh canine prostate tissue, ex vivo, from the diffuse reflectance profile of near-IR light as a function of source-detector distance. The effective attenuation coefficient, mueff, and the Optical Penetration Depth (OPD) were then calculated for near-IR wavelengths of 1064 nm, 1307 nm, and 1555 nm. Chapters 3 and 4 describe locally adaptive denoising algorithms applied to reduce speckle noise in OCT images of the prostate taken by experimental and clinical systems, respectively. The dual-tree complex wavelet transform (CDWT) is a relatively recent enhancement to the discrete wavelet transform (DWT), with important additional properties: It is nearly shift invariant and directionally selective in two and higher dimensions. The CDWT algorithm was implemented for denoising of OCT images. In Chapter 5, 2-D OCT images of the rat prostate were segmented to differentiate the cavernous nerves from the prostate gland. To detect these nerves, three image features were employed: Gabor filter, Daubechies wavelet, and Laws filter. The Gabor feature was applied with different standard deviations in the x and y directions. In the Daubechies wavelet feature, an 8-tap Daubechies orthonormal wavelet was implemented, and the low pass sub-band was chosen as the filtered image. Finally, Laws feature extraction was applied to the images. The features were segmented using a nearest-neighbor classifier. Morphological post-processing was used to remove small voids. In Chapter 6, a new algorithm based on thresholding and first-order derivative class of differential edge detection was implemented to see deeper in the OCT images. One of the main limitations in OCT imaging of the prostate tissue is the inability to image deep into opaque tissues. Currently, OCT is limited to an image depth of approximately 1 min in opaque tissues. Theoretical comparisons of detection performance for Fourier domain (FD) and time domain (TD) OCT have been previously reported. In Chapter 7, we compare several image quality metrics including signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), and equivalent number of looks (ENL) for TD-OCT and FD-OCT images taken of the rat prostate, in vivo. The results show that TD-OCT has inferior CNR, but superior SNR compared to FD-OCT, and that TD-OCT is better for deep imaging of opaque tissues. Finally, Chapter 8 summarizes the study and future directions for OCT imaging of the prostate gland are discussed.

Fast Sparse Coding for Range Data Denoising with Sparse Ridges Constraint.

PubMed

Gao, Zhi; Lao, Mingjie; Sang, Yongsheng; Wen, Fei; Ramesh, Bharath; Zhai, Ruifang

2018-05-06

Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors have been widely deployed on intelligent systems such as unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to perform localization, obstacle detection, and navigation tasks. Thus, research into range data processing with competitive performance in terms of both accuracy and efficiency has attracted increasing attention. Sparse coding has revolutionized signal processing and led to state-of-the-art performance in a variety of applications. However, dictionary learning, which plays the central role in sparse coding techniques, is computationally demanding, resulting in its limited applicability in real-time systems. In this study, we propose sparse coding algorithms with a fixed pre-learned ridge dictionary to realize range data denoising via leveraging the regularity of laser range measurements in man-made environments. Experiments on both synthesized data and real data demonstrate that our method obtains accuracy comparable to that of sophisticated sparse coding methods, but with much higher computational efficiency.

Wavelet analysis techniques applied to removing varying spectroscopic background in calibration model for pear sugar content

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Yande; Ying, Yibin; Lu, Huishan; Fu, Xiaping

2005-11-01

A new method is proposed to eliminate the varying background and noise simultaneously for multivariate calibration of Fourier transform near infrared (FT-NIR) spectral signals. An ideal spectrum signal prototype was constructed based on the FT-NIR spectrum of fruit sugar content measurement. The performances of wavelet based threshold de-noising approaches via different combinations of wavelet base functions were compared. Three families of wavelet base function (Daubechies, Symlets and Coiflets) were applied to estimate the performance of those wavelet bases and threshold selection rules by a series of experiments. The experimental results show that the best de-noising performance is reached via the combinations of Daubechies 4 or Symlet 4 wavelet base function. Based on the optimization parameter, wavelet regression models for sugar content of pear were also developed and result in a smaller prediction error than a traditional Partial Least Squares Regression (PLSR) mode.

Mining protein-protein interaction networks: denoising effects

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Marras, Elisabetta; Capobianco, Enrico

2009-01-01

A typical instrument to pursue analysis in complex network studies is the analysis of the statistical distributions. They are usually computed for measures which characterize network topology, and are aimed at capturing both structural and dynamics aspects. Protein-protein interaction networks (PPIN) have also been studied through several measures. It is in general observed that a power law is expected to characterize scale-free networks. However, mixing the original noise cover with outlying information and other system-dependent fluctuations makes the empirical detection of the power law a difficult task. As a result the uncertainty level increases when looking at the observed sample; in particular, one may wonder whether the computed features may be sufficient to explain the interactome. We then address noise problems by implementing both decomposition and denoising techniques that reduce the impact of factors known to affect the accuracy of power law detection.

A Real-Time De-Noising Algorithm for E-Noses in a Wireless Sensor Network

PubMed Central

Qu, Jianfeng; Chai, Yi; Yang, Simon X.

2009-01-01

A wireless e-nose network system is developed for the special purpose of monitoring odorant gases and accurately estimating odor strength in and around livestock farms. This system is to simultaneously acquire accurate odor strength values remotely at various locations, where each node is an e-nose that includes four metal-oxide semiconductor (MOS) gas sensors. A modified Kalman filtering technique is proposed for collecting raw data and de-noising based on the output noise characteristics of those gas sensors. The measurement noise variance is obtained in real time by data analysis using the proposed slip windows average method. The optimal system noise variance of the filter is obtained by using the experiments data. The Kalman filter theory on how to acquire MOS gas sensors data is discussed. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method can adjust the Kalman filter parameters and significantly reduce the noise from the gas sensors. PMID:22399946

Measuring Glial Metabolism in Repetitive Brain Trauma and Alzheimer’s Disease

DTIC Science & Technology

2016-09-01

Six methods: Single value decomposition (SVD), wavelet, sliding window, sliding window with Gaussian weighting, spline and spectral improvements...comparison of a range of different denoising methods for dynamic MRS. Six denoising methods were considered: Single value decomposition (SVD), wavelet...project by improving the software required for the data analysis by developing six different denoising methods. He also assisted with the testing

LLSURE: local linear SURE-based edge-preserving image filtering.

PubMed

Qiu, Tianshuang; Wang, Aiqi; Yu, Nannan; Song, Aimin

2013-01-01

In this paper, we propose a novel approach for performing high-quality edge-preserving image filtering. Based on a local linear model and using the principle of Stein's unbiased risk estimate as an estimator for the mean squared error from the noisy image only, we derive a simple explicit image filter which can filter out noise while preserving edges and fine-scale details. Moreover, this filter has a fast and exact linear-time algorithm whose computational complexity is independent of the filtering kernel size; thus, it can be applied to real time image processing tasks. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the new filter for various computer vision applications, including noise reduction, detail smoothing and enhancement, high dynamic range compression, and flash/no-flash denoising.

Sonar target enhancement by shrinkage of incoherent wavelet coefficients.

PubMed

Hunter, Alan J; van Vossen, Robbert

2014-01-01

Background reverberation can obscure useful features of the target echo response in broadband low-frequency sonar images, adversely affecting detection and classification performance. This paper describes a resolution and phase-preserving means of separating the target response from the background reverberation noise using a coherence-based wavelet shrinkage method proposed recently for de-noising magnetic resonance images. The algorithm weights the image wavelet coefficients in proportion to their coherence between different looks under the assumption that the target response is more coherent than the background. The algorithm is demonstrated successfully on experimental synthetic aperture sonar data from a broadband low-frequency sonar developed for buried object detection.

Single-trial extraction of cognitive evoked potentials by combination of third-order correlation and wavelet denoising.

PubMed

Zhang, Z; Tian, X

2005-01-01

The application of a recently proposed denoising implementation for obtaining cognitive evoked potentials (CEPs) at the single-trial level is shown. The aim of this investigation is to develop the technique of extracting CEPs by combining both the third-order correlation and the wavelet denoising methods. First, the noisy CEPs was passed through a finite impulse response filter whose impulse response is matched with the shape of the noise-free signal. It was shown that it is possible to estimate the filter impulse response on basis of a select third-order correlation slice (TOCS) of the input noisy CEPs. Second, the output from the third-order correlation filter is decomposed with bi-orthogonal splines at 5 levels. The CEPs is reconstructed by wavelet final approximation a5. We study its performance in simulated data as well as in cognitive evoked potentials of normal rat and Alzheimer's disease (AD) model rat. For the simulated data, the method gives a significantly better reconstruction of the single-trial cognitive evoked potentials responses in comparison with the simulated data. Moreover, with this approach we obtain a significantly better estimation of the amplitudes and latencies of the simulated CEPs. For the real data, the method clearly improves the visualization of single-trial CEPs. This allows the calculation of better averages as well as the study of systematic or unsystematic variations between trials.

Deep RNNs for video denoising

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Xinyuan; Song, Li; Yang, Xiaokang

2016-09-01

Video denoising can be described as the problem of mapping from a specific length of noisy frames to clean one. We propose a deep architecture based on Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) for video denoising. The model learns a patch-based end-to-end mapping between the clean and noisy video sequences. It takes the corrupted video sequences as the input and outputs the clean one. Our deep network, which we refer to as deep Recurrent Neural Networks (deep RNNs or DRNNs), stacks RNN layers where each layer receives the hidden state of the previous layer as input. Experiment shows (i) the recurrent architecture through temporal domain extracts motion information and does favor to video denoising, and (ii) deep architecture have large enough capacity for expressing mapping relation between corrupted videos as input and clean videos as output, furthermore, (iii) the model has generality to learned different mappings from videos corrupted by different types of noise (e.g., Poisson-Gaussian noise). By training on large video databases, we are able to compete with some existing video denoising methods.

An improved NAS-RIF algorithm for image restoration

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gao, Weizhe; Zou, Jianhua; Xu, Rong; Liu, Changhai; Li, Hengnian

2016-10-01

Space optical images are inevitably degraded by atmospheric turbulence, error of the optical system and motion. In order to get the true image, a novel nonnegativity and support constants recursive inverse filtering (NAS-RIF) algorithm is proposed to restore the degraded image. Firstly the image noise is weaken by Contourlet denoising algorithm. Secondly, the reliable object support region estimation is used to accelerate the algorithm convergence. We introduce the optimal threshold segmentation technology to improve the object support region. Finally, an object construction limit and the logarithm function are added to enhance algorithm stability. Experimental results demonstrate that, the proposed algorithm can increase the PSNR, and improve the quality of the restored images. The convergence speed of the proposed algorithm is faster than that of the original NAS-RIF algorithm.

Improved CEEMDAN-wavelet transform de-noising method and its application in well logging noise reduction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Jingxia; Guo, Yinghai; Shen, Yulin; Zhao, Difei; Li, Mi

2018-06-01

The use of geophysical logging data to identify lithology is an important groundwork in logging interpretation. Inevitably, noise is mixed in during data collection due to the equipment and other external factors and this will affect the further lithological identification and other logging interpretation. Therefore, to get a more accurate lithological identification it is necessary to adopt de-noising methods. In this study, a new de-noising method, namely improved complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise (CEEMDAN)-wavelet transform, is proposed, which integrates the superiorities of improved CEEMDAN and wavelet transform. Improved CEEMDAN, an effective self-adaptive multi-scale analysis method, is used to decompose non-stationary signals as the logging data to obtain the intrinsic mode function (IMF) of N different scales and one residual. Moreover, one self-adaptive scale selection method is used to determine the reconstruction scale k. Simultaneously, given the possible frequency aliasing problem between adjacent IMFs, a wavelet transform threshold de-noising method is used to reduce the noise of the (k-1)th IMF. Subsequently, the de-noised logging data are reconstructed by the de-noised (k-1)th IMF and the remaining low-frequency IMFs and the residual. Finally, empirical mode decomposition, improved CEEMDAN, wavelet transform and the proposed method are applied for analysis of the simulation and the actual data. Results show diverse performance of these de-noising methods with regard to accuracy for lithological identification. Compared with the other methods, the proposed method has the best self-adaptability and accuracy in lithological identification.

Automatic target recognition and detection in infrared imagery under cluttered background

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gundogdu, Erhan; Koç, Aykut; Alatan, A. Aydın.

2017-10-01

Visual object classification has long been studied in visible spectrum by utilizing conventional cameras. Since the labeled images has recently increased in number, it is possible to train deep Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) with significant amount of parameters. As the infrared (IR) sensor technology has been improved during the last two decades, labeled images extracted from IR sensors have been started to be used for object detection and recognition tasks. We address the problem of infrared object recognition and detection by exploiting 15K images from the real-field with long-wave and mid-wave IR sensors. For feature learning, a stacked denoising autoencoder is trained in this IR dataset. To recognize the objects, the trained stacked denoising autoencoder is fine-tuned according to the binary classification loss of the target object. Once the training is completed, the test samples are propagated over the network, and the probability of the test sample belonging to a class is computed. Moreover, the trained classifier is utilized in a detect-by-classification method, where the classification is performed in a set of candidate object boxes and the maximum confidence score in a particular location is accepted as the score of the detected object. To decrease the computational complexity, the detection step at every frame is avoided by running an efficient correlation filter based tracker. The detection part is performed when the tracker confidence is below a pre-defined threshold. The experiments conducted on the real field images demonstrate that the proposed detection and tracking framework presents satisfactory results for detecting tanks under cluttered background.

The image enhancement and region of interest extraction of lobster-eye X-ray dangerous material inspection system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhan, Qi; Wang, Xin; Mu, Baozhong; Xu, Jie; Xie, Qing; Li, Yaran; Chen, Yifan; He, Yanan

2016-10-01

Dangerous materials inspection is an important technique to confirm dangerous materials crimes. It has significant impact on the prohibition of dangerous materials-related crimes and the spread of dangerous materials. Lobster-Eye Optical Imaging System is a kind of dangerous materials detection device which mainly takes advantage of backscatter X-ray. The strength of the system is its applicability to access only one side of an object, and to detect dangerous materials without disturbing the surroundings of the target material. The device uses Compton scattered x-rays to create computerized outlines of suspected objects during security detection process. Due to the grid structure of the bionic object glass, which imitate the eye of a lobster, grids contribute to the main image noise during the imaging process. At the same time, when used to inspect structured or dense materials, the image is plagued by superposition artifacts and limited by attenuation and noise. With the goal of achieving high quality images which could be used for dangerous materials detection and further analysis, we developed effective image process methods applied to the system. The first aspect of the image process is the denoising and enhancing edge contrast process, during the process, we apply deconvolution algorithm to remove the grids and other noises. After image processing, we achieve high signal-to-noise ratio image. The second part is to reconstruct image from low dose X-ray exposure condition. We developed a kind of interpolation method to achieve the goal. The last aspect is the region of interest (ROI) extraction process, which could be used to help identifying dangerous materials mixed with complex backgrounds. The methods demonstrated in the paper have the potential to improve the sensitivity and quality of x-ray backscatter system imaging.

OBS Data Denoising Based on Compressed Sensing Using Fast Discrete Curvelet Transform

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nan, F.; Xu, Y.

2017-12-01

OBS (Ocean Bottom Seismometer) data denoising is an important step of OBS data processing and inversion. It is necessary to get clearer seismic phases for further velocity structure analysis. Traditional methods for OBS data denoising include band-pass filter, Wiener filter and deconvolution etc. (Liu, 2015). Most of these filtering methods are based on Fourier Transform (FT). Recently, the multi-scale transform methods such as wavelet transform (WT) and Curvelet transform (CvT) are widely used for data denoising in various applications. The FT, WT and CvT could represent signal sparsely and separate noise in transform domain. They could be used in different cases. Compared with Curvelet transform, the FT has Gibbs phenomenon and it cannot handle points discontinuities well. WT is well localized and multi scale, but it has poor orientation selectivity and could not handle curves discontinuities well. CvT is a multiscale directional transform that could represent curves with only a small number of coefficients. It provide an optimal sparse representation of objects with singularities along smooth curves, which is suitable for seismic data processing. As we know, different seismic phases in OBS data are showed as discontinuous curves in time domain. Hence, we promote to analysis the OBS data via CvT and separate the noise in CvT domain. In this paper, our sparsity-promoting inversion approach is restrained by L1 condition and we solve this L1 problem by using modified iteration thresholding. Results show that the proposed method could suppress the noise well and give sparse results in Curvelet domain. Figure 1 compares the Curvelet denoising method with Wavelet method on the same iterations and threshold through synthetic example. a)Original data. b) Add-noise data. c) Denoised data using CvT. d) Denoised data using WT. The CvT can well eliminate the noise and has better result than WT. Further we applied the CvT denoise method for the OBS data processing. Figure 2a is a common receiver gather collected in the Bohai Sea, China. The whole profile is 120km long with 987 shots. The horizontal axis is shot number. The vertical axis is travel time reduced by 6km/s. We use our method to process the data and get a denoised profile figure 2b. After denoising, most of the high frequency noise was suppressed and the seismic phases were clearer.

Comparisons of linear and nonlinear pyramid schemes for signal and image processing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Morales, Aldo W.; Ko, Sung-Jea

1997-04-01

Linear filters banks are being used extensively in image and video applications. New research results in wavelet applications for compression and de-noising are constantly appearing in the technical literature. On the other hand, non-linear filter banks are also being used regularly in image pyramid algorithms. There are some inherent advantages in using non-linear filters instead of linear filters when non-Gaussian processes are present in images. However, a consistent way of comparing performance criteria between these two schemes has not been fully developed yet. In this paper a recently discovered tool, sample selection probabilities, is used to compare the behavior of linear and non-linear filters. In the conversion from weights of order statistics (OS) filters to coefficients of the impulse response is obtained through these probabilities. However, the reverse problem: the conversion from coefficients of the impulse response to the weights of OS filters is not yet fully understood. One of the reasons for this difficulty is the highly non-linear nature of the partitions and generating function used. In the present paper the problem is posed as an optimization of integer linear programming subject to constraints directly obtained from the coefficients of the impulse response. Although the technique to be presented in not completely refined, it certainly appears to be promising. Some results will be shown.

Multiresolution edge detection using enhanced fuzzy c-means clustering for ultrasound image speckle reduction

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Tsantis, Stavros; Spiliopoulos, Stavros; Karnabatidis, Dimitrios

Purpose: Speckle suppression in ultrasound (US) images of various anatomic structures via a novel speckle noise reduction algorithm. Methods: The proposed algorithm employs an enhanced fuzzy c-means (EFCM) clustering and multiresolution wavelet analysis to distinguish edges from speckle noise in US images. The edge detection procedure involves a coarse-to-fine strategy with spatial and interscale constraints so as to classify wavelet local maxima distribution at different frequency bands. As an outcome, an edge map across scales is derived whereas the wavelet coefficients that correspond to speckle are suppressed in the inverse wavelet transform acquiring the denoised US image. Results: A totalmore » of 34 thyroid, liver, and breast US examinations were performed on a Logiq 9 US system. Each of these images was subjected to the proposed EFCM algorithm and, for comparison, to commercial speckle reduction imaging (SRI) software and another well-known denoising approach, Pizurica's method. The quantification of the speckle suppression performance in the selected set of US images was carried out via Speckle Suppression Index (SSI) with results of 0.61, 0.71, and 0.73 for EFCM, SRI, and Pizurica's methods, respectively. Peak signal-to-noise ratios of 35.12, 33.95, and 29.78 and edge preservation indices of 0.94, 0.93, and 0.86 were found for the EFCM, SIR, and Pizurica's method, respectively, demonstrating that the proposed method achieves superior speckle reduction performance and edge preservation properties. Based on two independent radiologists’ qualitative evaluation the proposed method significantly improved image characteristics over standard baseline B mode images, and those processed with the Pizurica's method. Furthermore, it yielded results similar to those for SRI for breast and thyroid images significantly better results than SRI for liver imaging, thus improving diagnostic accuracy in both superficial and in-depth structures. Conclusions: A new wavelet-based EFCM clustering model was introduced toward noise reduction and detail preservation. The proposed method improves the overall US image quality, which in turn could affect the decision-making on whether additional imaging and/or intervention is needed.« less

Multiresolution edge detection using enhanced fuzzy c-means clustering for ultrasound image speckle reduction.

PubMed

Tsantis, Stavros; Spiliopoulos, Stavros; Skouroliakou, Aikaterini; Karnabatidis, Dimitrios; Hazle, John D; Kagadis, George C

2014-07-01

Speckle suppression in ultrasound (US) images of various anatomic structures via a novel speckle noise reduction algorithm. The proposed algorithm employs an enhanced fuzzy c-means (EFCM) clustering and multiresolution wavelet analysis to distinguish edges from speckle noise in US images. The edge detection procedure involves a coarse-to-fine strategy with spatial and interscale constraints so as to classify wavelet local maxima distribution at different frequency bands. As an outcome, an edge map across scales is derived whereas the wavelet coefficients that correspond to speckle are suppressed in the inverse wavelet transform acquiring the denoised US image. A total of 34 thyroid, liver, and breast US examinations were performed on a Logiq 9 US system. Each of these images was subjected to the proposed EFCM algorithm and, for comparison, to commercial speckle reduction imaging (SRI) software and another well-known denoising approach, Pizurica's method. The quantification of the speckle suppression performance in the selected set of US images was carried out via Speckle Suppression Index (SSI) with results of 0.61, 0.71, and 0.73 for EFCM, SRI, and Pizurica's methods, respectively. Peak signal-to-noise ratios of 35.12, 33.95, and 29.78 and edge preservation indices of 0.94, 0.93, and 0.86 were found for the EFCM, SIR, and Pizurica's method, respectively, demonstrating that the proposed method achieves superior speckle reduction performance and edge preservation properties. Based on two independent radiologists' qualitative evaluation the proposed method significantly improved image characteristics over standard baseline B mode images, and those processed with the Pizurica's method. Furthermore, it yielded results similar to those for SRI for breast and thyroid images significantly better results than SRI for liver imaging, thus improving diagnostic accuracy in both superficial and in-depth structures. A new wavelet-based EFCM clustering model was introduced toward noise reduction and detail preservation. The proposed method improves the overall US image quality, which in turn could affect the decision-making on whether additional imaging and/or intervention is needed.

Wavelets, ridgelets, and curvelets for Poisson noise removal.

PubMed

Zhang, Bo; Fadili, Jalal M; Starck, Jean-Luc

2008-07-01

In order to denoise Poisson count data, we introduce a variance stabilizing transform (VST) applied on a filtered discrete Poisson process, yielding a near Gaussian process with asymptotic constant variance. This new transform, which can be deemed as an extension of the Anscombe transform to filtered data, is simple, fast, and efficient in (very) low-count situations. We combine this VST with the filter banks of wavelets, ridgelets and curvelets, leading to multiscale VSTs (MS-VSTs) and nonlinear decomposition schemes. By doing so, the noise-contaminated coefficients of these MS-VST-modified transforms are asymptotically normally distributed with known variances. A classical hypothesis-testing framework is adopted to detect the significant coefficients, and a sparsity-driven iterative scheme reconstructs properly the final estimate. A range of examples show the power of this MS-VST approach for recovering important structures of various morphologies in (very) low-count images. These results also demonstrate that the MS-VST approach is competitive relative to many existing denoising methods.

Weak characteristic information extraction from early fault of wind turbine generator gearbox

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xu, Xiaoli; Liu, Xiuli

2017-09-01

Given the weak early degradation characteristic information during early fault evolution in gearbox of wind turbine generator, traditional singular value decomposition (SVD)-based denoising may result in loss of useful information. A weak characteristic information extraction based on μ-SVD and local mean decomposition (LMD) is developed to address this problem. The basic principle of the method is as follows: Determine the denoising order based on cumulative contribution rate, perform signal reconstruction, extract and subject the noisy part of signal to LMD and μ-SVD denoising, and obtain denoised signal through superposition. Experimental results show that this method can significantly weaken signal noise, effectively extract the weak characteristic information of early fault, and facilitate the early fault warning and dynamic predictive maintenance.

A neural network-based method for spectral distortion correction in photon counting x-ray CT

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Touch, Mengheng; Clark, Darin P.; Barber, William; Badea, Cristian T.

2016-08-01

Spectral CT using a photon counting x-ray detector (PCXD) shows great potential for measuring material composition based on energy dependent x-ray attenuation. Spectral CT is especially suited for imaging with K-edge contrast agents to address the otherwise limited contrast in soft tissues. We have developed a micro-CT system based on a PCXD. This system enables both 4 energy bins acquisition, as well as full-spectrum mode in which the energy thresholds of the PCXD are swept to sample the full energy spectrum for each detector element and projection angle. Measurements provided by the PCXD, however, are distorted due to undesirable physical effects in the detector and can be very noisy due to photon starvation in narrow energy bins. To address spectral distortions, we propose and demonstrate a novel artificial neural network (ANN)-based spectral distortion correction mechanism, which learns to undo the distortion in spectral CT, resulting in improved material decomposition accuracy. To address noise, post-reconstruction denoising based on bilateral filtration, which jointly enforces intensity gradient sparsity between spectral samples, is used to further improve the robustness of ANN training and material decomposition accuracy. Our ANN-based distortion correction method is calibrated using 3D-printed phantoms and a model of our spectral CT system. To enable realistic simulations and validation of our method, we first modeled the spectral distortions using experimental data acquired from 109Cd and 133Ba radioactive sources measured with our PCXD. Next, we trained an ANN to learn the relationship between the distorted spectral CT projections and the ideal, distortion-free projections in a calibration step. This required knowledge of the ground truth, distortion-free spectral CT projections, which were obtained by simulating a spectral CT scan of the digital version of a 3D-printed phantom. Once the training was completed, the trained ANN was used to perform distortion correction on any subsequent scans of the same system with the same parameters. We used joint bilateral filtration to perform noise reduction by jointly enforcing intensity gradient sparsity between the reconstructed images for each energy bin. Following reconstruction and denoising, the CT data was spectrally decomposed using the photoelectric effect, Compton scattering, and a K-edge material (i.e. iodine). The ANN-based distortion correction approach was tested using both simulations and experimental data acquired in phantoms and a mouse with our PCXD-based micro-CT system for 4 bins and full-spectrum acquisition modes. The iodine detectability and decomposition accuracy were assessed using the contrast-to-noise ratio and relative error in iodine concentration estimation metrics in images with and without distortion correction. In simulation, the material decomposition accuracy in the reconstructed data was vastly improved following distortion correction and denoising, with 50% and 20% reductions in material concentration measurement error in full-spectrum and 4 energy bins cases, respectively. Overall, experimental data confirms that full-spectrum mode provides superior results to 4-energy mode when the distortion corrections are applied. The material decomposition accuracy in the reconstructed data was vastly improved following distortion correction and denoising, with as much as a 41% reduction in material concentration measurement error for full-spectrum mode, while also bringing the iodine detectability to 4-6 mg ml-1. Distortion correction also improved the 4 bins mode data, but to a lesser extent. The results demonstrate the experimental feasibility and potential advantages of ANN-based distortion correction and joint bilateral filtration-based denoising for accurate K-edge imaging with a PCXD. Given the computational efficiency with which the ANN can be applied to projection data, the proposed scheme can be readily integrated into existing CT reconstruction pipelines.

Medical image processing on the GPU - past, present and future.

PubMed

Eklund, Anders; Dufort, Paul; Forsberg, Daniel; LaConte, Stephen M

2013-12-01

Graphics processing units (GPUs) are used today in a wide range of applications, mainly because they can dramatically accelerate parallel computing, are affordable and energy efficient. In the field of medical imaging, GPUs are in some cases crucial for enabling practical use of computationally demanding algorithms. This review presents the past and present work on GPU accelerated medical image processing, and is meant to serve as an overview and introduction to existing GPU implementations. The review covers GPU acceleration of basic image processing operations (filtering, interpolation, histogram estimation and distance transforms), the most commonly used algorithms in medical imaging (image registration, image segmentation and image denoising) and algorithms that are specific to individual modalities (CT, PET, SPECT, MRI, fMRI, DTI, ultrasound, optical imaging and microscopy). The review ends by highlighting some future possibilities and challenges. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Measuring in-vivo and in-situ ex-vivo the 3D deformation of the lamina cribrosa microstructure under elevated intraocular pressure

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wei, Junchao; Yang, Bin; Voorhees, Andrew P.; Tran, Huong; Brazile, Bryn; Wang, Bo; Schuman, Joel; Smith, Matthew A.; Wollstein, Gadi; Sigal, Ian A.

2018-02-01

Elevated intraocular pressure (IOP) deforms the lamina cribrosa (LC), a structure within the optic nerve head (ONH) in the back of the eye. Evidence suggests that these deformations trigger events that eventually cause irreversible blindness, and have therefore been studied in-vivo using optical coherence tomography (OCT), and ex-vivo using OCT and a diversity of techniques. To the best of our knowledge, there have been no in-situ ex-vivo studies of LC mechanics. Our goal was two-fold: to introduce a technique for measuring 3D LC deformations from OCT, and to determine whether deformations of the LC induced by elevated IOP differ between in-vivo and in-situ ex-vivo conditions. A healthy adult rhesus macaque monkey was anesthetized and IOP was controlled by inserting a 27- gauge needle into the anterior chamber of the eye. Spectral domain OCT was used to obtain volumetric scans of the ONH at normal and elevated IOPs. To improve the visibility of the LC microstructure the scans were first processed using a novel denoising technique. Zero-normalized cross-correlation was used to find paired corresponding locations between images. For each location pair, the components of the 3D strain tensor were determined using non-rigid image registration. A mild IOP elevation from 10 to 15mmHg caused LC effective strains as large as 3%, and about 50% larger in-vivo than in-situ ex-vivo. The deformations were highly heterogeneous, with substantial 3D components, suggesting that accurate measurement of LC microstructure deformation requires high-resolution volumes. This technique will help improve understanding of LC biomechanics and how IOP contributes to glaucoma.

A Four-Stage Hybrid Model for Hydrological Time Series Forecasting

PubMed Central

Di, Chongli; Yang, Xiaohua; Wang, Xiaochao

2014-01-01

Hydrological time series forecasting remains a difficult task due to its complicated nonlinear, non-stationary and multi-scale characteristics. To solve this difficulty and improve the prediction accuracy, a novel four-stage hybrid model is proposed for hydrological time series forecasting based on the principle of ‘denoising, decomposition and ensemble’. The proposed model has four stages, i.e., denoising, decomposition, components prediction and ensemble. In the denoising stage, the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) method is utilized to reduce the noises in the hydrological time series. Then, an improved method of EMD, the ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD), is applied to decompose the denoised series into a number of intrinsic mode function (IMF) components and one residual component. Next, the radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) is adopted to predict the trend of all of the components obtained in the decomposition stage. In the final ensemble prediction stage, the forecasting results of all of the IMF and residual components obtained in the third stage are combined to generate the final prediction results, using a linear neural network (LNN) model. For illustration and verification, six hydrological cases with different characteristics are used to test the effectiveness of the proposed model. The proposed hybrid model performs better than conventional single models, the hybrid models without denoising or decomposition and the hybrid models based on other methods, such as the wavelet analysis (WA)-based hybrid models. In addition, the denoising and decomposition strategies decrease the complexity of the series and reduce the difficulties of the forecasting. With its effective denoising and accurate decomposition ability, high prediction precision and wide applicability, the new model is very promising for complex time series forecasting. This new forecast model is an extension of nonlinear prediction models. PMID:25111782

A four-stage hybrid model for hydrological time series forecasting.

PubMed

Di, Chongli; Yang, Xiaohua; Wang, Xiaochao

2014-01-01

Hydrological time series forecasting remains a difficult task due to its complicated nonlinear, non-stationary and multi-scale characteristics. To solve this difficulty and improve the prediction accuracy, a novel four-stage hybrid model is proposed for hydrological time series forecasting based on the principle of 'denoising, decomposition and ensemble'. The proposed model has four stages, i.e., denoising, decomposition, components prediction and ensemble. In the denoising stage, the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) method is utilized to reduce the noises in the hydrological time series. Then, an improved method of EMD, the ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD), is applied to decompose the denoised series into a number of intrinsic mode function (IMF) components and one residual component. Next, the radial basis function neural network (RBFNN) is adopted to predict the trend of all of the components obtained in the decomposition stage. In the final ensemble prediction stage, the forecasting results of all of the IMF and residual components obtained in the third stage are combined to generate the final prediction results, using a linear neural network (LNN) model. For illustration and verification, six hydrological cases with different characteristics are used to test the effectiveness of the proposed model. The proposed hybrid model performs better than conventional single models, the hybrid models without denoising or decomposition and the hybrid models based on other methods, such as the wavelet analysis (WA)-based hybrid models. In addition, the denoising and decomposition strategies decrease the complexity of the series and reduce the difficulties of the forecasting. With its effective denoising and accurate decomposition ability, high prediction precision and wide applicability, the new model is very promising for complex time series forecasting. This new forecast model is an extension of nonlinear prediction models.

Computational optical tomography using 3-D deep convolutional neural networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nguyen, Thanh; Bui, Vy; Nehmetallah, George

2018-04-01

Deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) offer a promising performance for many image processing areas, such as super-resolution, deconvolution, image classification, denoising, and segmentation, with outstanding results. Here, we develop for the first time, to our knowledge, a method to perform 3-D computational optical tomography using 3-D DCNN. A simulated 3-D phantom dataset was first constructed and converted to a dataset of phase objects imaged on a spatial light modulator. For each phase image in the dataset, the corresponding diffracted intensity image was experimentally recorded on a CCD. We then experimentally demonstrate the ability of the developed 3-D DCNN algorithm to solve the inverse problem by reconstructing the 3-D index of refraction distributions of test phantoms from the dataset from their corresponding diffraction patterns.

MIND: modality independent neighbourhood descriptor for multi-modal deformable registration.

PubMed

Heinrich, Mattias P; Jenkinson, Mark; Bhushan, Manav; Matin, Tahreema; Gleeson, Fergus V; Brady, Sir Michael; Schnabel, Julia A

2012-10-01

Deformable registration of images obtained from different modalities remains a challenging task in medical image analysis. This paper addresses this important problem and proposes a modality independent neighbourhood descriptor (MIND) for both linear and deformable multi-modal registration. Based on the similarity of small image patches within one image, it aims to extract the distinctive structure in a local neighbourhood, which is preserved across modalities. The descriptor is based on the concept of image self-similarity, which has been introduced for non-local means filtering for image denoising. It is able to distinguish between different types of features such as corners, edges and homogeneously textured regions. MIND is robust to the most considerable differences between modalities: non-functional intensity relations, image noise and non-uniform bias fields. The multi-dimensional descriptor can be efficiently computed in a dense fashion across the whole image and provides point-wise local similarity across modalities based on the absolute or squared difference between descriptors, making it applicable for a wide range of transformation models and optimisation algorithms. We use the sum of squared differences of the MIND representations of the images as a similarity metric within a symmetric non-parametric Gauss-Newton registration framework. In principle, MIND would be applicable to the registration of arbitrary modalities. In this work, we apply and validate it for the registration of clinical 3D thoracic CT scans between inhale and exhale as well as the alignment of 3D CT and MRI scans. Experimental results show the advantages of MIND over state-of-the-art techniques such as conditional mutual information and entropy images, with respect to clinically annotated landmark locations. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Network-based de-noising improves prediction from microarray data.

PubMed

Kato, Tsuyoshi; Murata, Yukio; Miura, Koh; Asai, Kiyoshi; Horton, Paul B; Koji, Tsuda; Fujibuchi, Wataru

2006-03-20

Prediction of human cell response to anti-cancer drugs (compounds) from microarray data is a challenging problem, due to the noise properties of microarrays as well as the high variance of living cell responses to drugs. Hence there is a strong need for more practical and robust methods than standard methods for real-value prediction. We devised an extended version of the off-subspace noise-reduction (de-noising) method to incorporate heterogeneous network data such as sequence similarity or protein-protein interactions into a single framework. Using that method, we first de-noise the gene expression data for training and test data and also the drug-response data for training data. Then we predict the unknown responses of each drug from the de-noised input data. For ascertaining whether de-noising improves prediction or not, we carry out 12-fold cross-validation for assessment of the prediction performance. We use the Pearson's correlation coefficient between the true and predicted response values as the prediction performance. De-noising improves the prediction performance for 65% of drugs. Furthermore, we found that this noise reduction method is robust and effective even when a large amount of artificial noise is added to the input data. We found that our extended off-subspace noise-reduction method combining heterogeneous biological data is successful and quite useful to improve prediction of human cell cancer drug responses from microarray data.

Regularization by Functions of Bounded Variation and Applications to Image Enhancement

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Casas, E.; Kunisch, K.; Pola, C.

1999-09-15

Optimization problems regularized by bounded variation seminorms are analyzed. The optimality system is obtained and finite-dimensional approximations of bounded variation function spaces as well as of the optimization problems are studied. It is demonstrated that the choice of the vector norm in the definition of the bounded variation seminorm is of special importance for approximating subspaces consisting of piecewise constant functions. Algorithms based on a primal-dual framework that exploit the structure of these nondifferentiable optimization problems are proposed. Numerical examples are given for denoising of blocky images with very high noise.

On soft clipping of Zernike moments for deblurring and enhancement of optical point spread functions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Becherer, Nico; Jödicke, Hanna; Schlosser, Gregor; Hesser, Jürgen; Zeilfelder, Frank; Männer, Reinhard

2006-02-01

Blur and noise originating from the physical imaging processes degrade the microscope data. Accurate deblurring techniques require, however, an accurate estimation of the underlying point-spread function (PSF). A good representation of PSFs can be achieved by Zernike Polynomials since they offer a compact representation where low-order coefficients represent typical aberrations of optical wavefronts while noise is represented in higher order coefficients. A quantitative description of the noise distribution (Gaussian) over the Zernike moments of various orders is given which is the basis for the new soft clipping approach for denoising of PSFs. Instead of discarding moments beyond a certain order, those Zernike moments that are more sensitive to noise are dampened according to the measured distribution and the present noise model. Further, a new scheme to combine experimental and theoretical PSFs in Zernike space is presented. According to our experimental reconstructions, using the new improved PSF the correlation between reconstructed and original volume is raised by 15% on average cases and up to 85% in the case of thin fibre structures, compared to reconstructions where a non improved PSF was used. Finally, we demonstrate the advantages of our approach on 3D images of confocal microscopes by generating visually improved volumes. Additionally, we are presenting a method to render the reconstructed results using a new volume rendering method that is almost artifact-free. The new approach is based on a Shear-Warp technique, wavelet data encoding techniques and a recent approach to approximate the gray value distribution by a Super spline model.

a Universal De-Noising Algorithm for Ground-Based LIDAR Signal

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ma, Xin; Xiang, Chengzhi; Gong, Wei

2016-06-01

Ground-based lidar, working as an effective remote sensing tool, plays an irreplaceable role in the study of atmosphere, since it has the ability to provide the atmospheric vertical profile. However, the appearance of noise in a lidar signal is unavoidable, which leads to difficulties and complexities when searching for more information. Every de-noising method has its own characteristic but with a certain limitation, since the lidar signal will vary with the atmosphere changes. In this paper, a universal de-noising algorithm is proposed to enhance the SNR of a ground-based lidar signal, which is based on signal segmentation and reconstruction. The signal segmentation serving as the keystone of the algorithm, segments the lidar signal into three different parts, which are processed by different de-noising method according to their own characteristics. The signal reconstruction is a relatively simple procedure that is to splice the signal sections end to end. Finally, a series of simulation signal tests and real dual field-of-view lidar signal shows the feasibility of the universal de-noising algorithm.

In Situ and In Vivo Molecular Analysis by Coherent Raman Scattering Microscopy

PubMed Central

Liao, Chien-Sheng; Cheng, Ji-Xin

2017-01-01

Coherent Raman scattering (CRS) microscopy is a high-speed vibrational imaging platform with the ability to visualize the chemical content of a living specimen by using molecular vibrational fingerprints. We review technical advances and biological applications of CRS microscopy. The basic theory of CRS and the state-of-the-art instrumentation of a CRS microscope are presented. We further summarize and compare the algorithms that are used to separate the Raman signal from the nonresonant background, to denoise a CRS image, and to decompose a hyperspectral CRS image into concentration maps of principal components. Important applications of single-frequency and hyperspectral CRS microscopy are highlighted. Potential directions of CRS microscopy are discussed. PMID:27306307

Improving the Performance of the Prony Method Using a Wavelet Domain Filter for MRI Denoising

PubMed Central

Lentini, Marianela; Paluszny, Marco

2014-01-01

The Prony methods are used for exponential fitting. We use a variant of the Prony method for abnormal brain tissue detection in sequences of T 2 weighted magnetic resonance images. Here, MR images are considered to be affected only by Rician noise, and a new wavelet domain bilateral filtering process is implemented to reduce the noise in the images. This filter is a modification of Kazubek's algorithm and we use synthetic images to show the ability of the new procedure to suppress noise and compare its performance with respect to the original filter, using quantitative and qualitative criteria. The tissue classification process is illustrated using a real sequence of T 2 MR images, and the filter is applied to each image before using the variant of the Prony method. PMID:24834108

Improving the performance of the prony method using a wavelet domain filter for MRI denoising.

PubMed

Jaramillo, Rodney; Lentini, Marianela; Paluszny, Marco

2014-01-01

The Prony methods are used for exponential fitting. We use a variant of the Prony method for abnormal brain tissue detection in sequences of T 2 weighted magnetic resonance images. Here, MR images are considered to be affected only by Rician noise, and a new wavelet domain bilateral filtering process is implemented to reduce the noise in the images. This filter is a modification of Kazubek's algorithm and we use synthetic images to show the ability of the new procedure to suppress noise and compare its performance with respect to the original filter, using quantitative and qualitative criteria. The tissue classification process is illustrated using a real sequence of T 2 MR images, and the filter is applied to each image before using the variant of the Prony method.

Subjective and objective heterogeneity scores for differentiating small renal masses using contrast-enhanced CT.

PubMed

Leng, Shuai; Takahashi, Naoki; Gomez Cardona, Daniel; Kitajima, Kazuhiro; McCollough, Brian; Li, Zhoubo; Kawashima, Akira; Leibovich, Bradley C; McCollough, Cynthia H

2017-05-01

The aim of this study was to assess the effect of denoising on objective heterogeneity scores and its diagnostic capability for the diagnosis of angiomyolipoma (AML) and renal cell carcinoma (RCC). A total of 158 resected renal masses ≤4 cm [98 clear cell (cc) RCCs, 36 papillary (pap)-RCCs, and 24 AMLs] from 139 patients were evaluated. A representative contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CT) image for each mass was selected by a genitourinary radiologist. A largest possible region of interest was drawn on each mass by the radiologist, from which three objective heterogeneity indices were calculated: standard deviation (SD), entropy (Ent), and uniformity (Uni). Objective heterogeneity indices were also calculated after images were processed with a denoising algorithm (non-local means) at three strengths: weak, medium, and strong. Two genitourinary radiologists also subjectively scored each mass independently using a three-point scale (1-3; with 1 the least and 3 the most heterogeneous), which were added to represent the final subjective heterogeneity score of each mass. Heterogeneity scores were compared among mass types, and area under the ROC curve (AUC) was calculated. For all heterogeneity indices, cc-RCC was significantly more heterogeneous than pap-RCC and AML (p < 0.001), but no significant difference was found between pap-RCC and AML (p > 0.01). For cc-RCC and pap-RCC differentiation, AUCs were 0.91, 0.81, 0.78, and 0.78 for the subjective score, SD, Ent, and Uni, respectively, using original images. The corresponding AUC values were 0.84, 0.74, 0.79, and 0.80 for differentiation of AML and cc-RCC. Noise reduction at weak setting improves AUC values by 0.03, 0.05, and 0.05 for SD, entropy, and uniformity for differentiation of cc-RCC from pap-RCC. Further increase of filtering strength did not improve AUC values. For differentiation of AML vs. cc-RCC, the AUC values stayed relatively flat using the noise reduction technique at different strengths for all three indices. Both subjective and objective heterogeneity indices can differentiate cc-RCC from pap-RCC and AML. Noise reduction improved differentiation of cc-RCC from pap-RCC, but not differentiation of AML from cc-RCC.

Optimal wavelet denoising for smart biomonitor systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Messer, Sheila R.; Agzarian, John; Abbott, Derek

2001-03-01

Future smart-systems promise many benefits for biomedical diagnostics. The ideal is for simple portable systems that display and interpret information from smart integrated probes or MEMS-based devices. In this paper, we will discuss a step towards this vision with a heart bio-monitor case study. An electronic stethoscope is used to record heart sounds and the problem of extracting noise from the signal is addressed via the use of wavelets and averaging. In our example of heartbeat analysis, phonocardiograms (PCGs) have many advantages in that they may be replayed and analysed for spectral and frequency information. Many sources of noise may pollute a PCG including foetal breath sounds if the subject is pregnant, lung and breath sounds, environmental noise and noise from contact between the recording device and the skin. Wavelets can be employed to denoise the PCG. The signal is decomposed by a discrete wavelet transform. Due to the efficient decomposition of heart signals, their wavelet coefficients tend to be much larger than those due to noise. Thus, coefficients below a certain level are regarded as noise and are thresholded out. The signal can then be reconstructed without significant loss of information in the signal. The questions that this study attempts to answer are which wavelet families, levels of decomposition, and thresholding techniques best remove the noise in a PCG. The use of averaging in combination with wavelet denoising is also addressed. Possible applications of the Hilbert Transform to heart sound analysis are discussed.

Fast Sparse Coding for Range Data Denoising with Sparse Ridges Constraint

PubMed Central

Lao, Mingjie; Sang, Yongsheng; Wen, Fei; Zhai, Ruifang

2018-01-01

Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors have been widely deployed on intelligent systems such as unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to perform localization, obstacle detection, and navigation tasks. Thus, research into range data processing with competitive performance in terms of both accuracy and efficiency has attracted increasing attention. Sparse coding has revolutionized signal processing and led to state-of-the-art performance in a variety of applications. However, dictionary learning, which plays the central role in sparse coding techniques, is computationally demanding, resulting in its limited applicability in real-time systems. In this study, we propose sparse coding algorithms with a fixed pre-learned ridge dictionary to realize range data denoising via leveraging the regularity of laser range measurements in man-made environments. Experiments on both synthesized data and real data demonstrate that our method obtains accuracy comparable to that of sophisticated sparse coding methods, but with much higher computational efficiency. PMID:29734793

Stochastic resonance in an underdamped system with FitzHug-Nagumo potential for weak signal detection

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

López, Cristian; Zhong, Wei; Lu, Siliang; Cong, Feiyun; Cortese, Ignacio

2017-12-01

Vibration signals are widely used for bearing fault detection and diagnosis. When signals are acquired in the field, usually, the faulty periodic signal is weak and is concealed by noise. Various de-noising methods have been developed to extract the target signal from the raw signal. Stochastic resonance (SR) is a technique that changed the traditional denoising process, in which the weak periodic fault signal can be identified by adding an expression, the potential, to the raw signal and solving a differential equation problem. However, current SR methods have some deficiencies such us limited filtering performance, low frequency input signal and sequential search for optimum parameters. Consequently, in this study, we explore the application of SR based on the FitzHug-Nagumo (FHN) potential in rolling bearing vibration signals. Besides, we improve the search of the SR optimum parameters by the use of particle swarm optimization (PSO). The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by using both simulated and real bearing data sets.

Speckle noise removal applied to ultrasound image of carotid artery based on total least squares model.

PubMed

Yang, Lei; Lu, Jun; Dai, Ming; Ren, Li-Jie; Liu, Wei-Zong; Li, Zhen-Zhou; Gong, Xue-Hao

2016-10-06

An ultrasonic image speckle noise removal method by using total least squares model is proposed and applied onto images of cardiovascular structures such as the carotid artery. On the basis of the least squares principle, the related principle of minimum square method is applied to cardiac ultrasound image speckle noise removal process to establish the model of total least squares, orthogonal projection transformation processing is utilized for the output of the model, and the denoising processing for the cardiac ultrasound image speckle noise is realized. Experimental results show that the improved algorithm can greatly improve the resolution of the image, and meet the needs of clinical medical diagnosis and treatment of the cardiovascular system for the head and neck. Furthermore, the success in imaging of carotid arteries has strong implications in neurological complications such as stroke.

Effect of Edge-Preserving Adaptive Image Filter on Low-Contrast Detectability in CT Systems: Application of ROC Analysis

PubMed Central

Okumura, Miwa; Ota, Takamasa; Kainuma, Kazuhisa; Sayre, James W.; McNitt-Gray, Michael; Katada, Kazuhiro

2008-01-01

Objective. For the multislice CT (MSCT) systems with a larger number of detector rows, it is essential to employ dose-reduction techniques. As reported in previous studies, edge-preserving adaptive image filters, which selectively eliminate only the noise elements that are increased when the radiation dose is reduced without affecting the sharpness of images, have been developed. In the present study, we employed receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis to assess the effects of the quantum denoising system (QDS), which is an edge-preserving adaptive filter that we have developed, on low-contrast resolution, and to evaluate to what degree the radiation dose can be reduced while maintaining acceptable low-contrast resolution. Materials and Methods. The low-contrast phantoms (Catphan 412) were scanned at various tube current settings, and ROC analysis was then performed for the groups of images obtained with/without the use of QDS at each tube current to determine whether or not a target could be identified. The tube current settings for which the area under the ROC curve (Az value) was approximately 0.7 were determined for both groups of images with/without the use of QDS. Then, the radiation dose reduction ratio when QDS was used was calculated by converting the determined tube current to the radiation dose. Results. The use of the QDS edge-preserving adaptive image filter allowed the radiation dose to be reduced by up to 38%. Conclusion. The QDS was found to be useful for reducing the radiation dose without affecting the low-contrast resolution in MSCT studies. PMID:19043565

PULSAR SIGNAL DENOISING METHOD BASED ON LAPLACE DISTRIBUTION IN NO-SUBSAMPLING WAVELET PACKET DOMAIN

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Wenbo, Wang; Yanchao, Zhao; Xiangli, Wang

2016-11-01

In order to improve the denoising effect of the pulsar signal, a new denoising method is proposed in the no-subsampling wavelet packet domain based on the local Laplace prior model. First, we count the true noise-free pulsar signal’s wavelet packet coefficient distribution characteristics and construct the true signal wavelet packet coefficients’ Laplace probability density function model. Then, we estimate the denosied wavelet packet coefficients by using the noisy pulsar wavelet coefficients based on maximum a posteriori criteria. Finally, we obtain the denoisied pulsar signal through no-subsampling wavelet packet reconstruction of the estimated coefficients. The experimental results show that the proposed method performs better when calculating the pulsar time of arrival than the translation-invariant wavelet denoising method.

A novel strategy for signal denoising using reweighted SVD and its applications to weak fault feature enhancement of rotating machinery

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhao, Ming; Jia, Xiaodong

2017-09-01

Singular value decomposition (SVD), as an effective signal denoising tool, has been attracting considerable attention in recent years. The basic idea behind SVD denoising is to preserve the singular components (SCs) with significant singular values. However, it is shown that the singular values mainly reflect the energy of decomposed SCs, therefore traditional SVD denoising approaches are essentially energy-based, which tend to highlight the high-energy regular components in the measured signal, while ignoring the weak feature caused by early fault. To overcome this issue, a reweighted singular value decomposition (RSVD) strategy is proposed for signal denoising and weak feature enhancement. In this work, a novel information index called periodic modulation intensity is introduced to quantify the diagnostic information in a mechanical signal. With this index, the decomposed SCs can be evaluated and sorted according to their information levels, rather than energy. Based on that, a truncated linear weighting function is proposed to control the contribution of each SC in the reconstruction of the denoised signal. In this way, some weak but informative SCs could be highlighted effectively. The advantages of RSVD over traditional approaches are demonstrated by both simulated signals and real vibration/acoustic data from a two-stage gearbox as well as train bearings. The results demonstrate that the proposed method can successfully extract the weak fault feature even in the presence of heavy noise and ambient interferences.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Dong, X; Petrongolo, M; Wang, T

Purpose: A general problem of dual-energy CT (DECT) is that the decomposition is sensitive to noise in the two sets of dual-energy projection data, resulting in severely degraded qualities of decomposed images. We have previously proposed an iterative denoising method for DECT. Using a linear decomposition function, the method does not gain the full benefits of DECT on beam-hardening correction. In this work, we expand the framework of our iterative method to include non-linear decomposition models for noise suppression in DECT. Methods: We first obtain decomposed projections, which are free of beam-hardening artifacts, using a lookup table pre-measured on amore » calibration phantom. First-pass material images with high noise are reconstructed from the decomposed projections using standard filter-backprojection reconstruction. Noise on the decomposed images is then suppressed by an iterative method, which is formulated in the form of least-square estimation with smoothness regularization. Based on the design principles of a best linear unbiased estimator, we include the inverse of the estimated variance-covariance matrix of the decomposed images as the penalty weight in the least-square term. Analytical formulae are derived to compute the variance-covariance matrix from the measured decomposition lookup table. Results: We have evaluated the proposed method via phantom studies. Using non-linear decomposition, our method effectively suppresses the streaking artifacts of beam-hardening and obtains more uniform images than our previous approach based on a linear model. The proposed method reduces the average noise standard deviation of two basis materials by one order of magnitude without sacrificing the spatial resolution. Conclusion: We propose a general framework of iterative denoising for material decomposition of DECT. Preliminary phantom studies have shown the proposed method improves the image uniformity and reduces noise level without resolution loss. In the future, we will perform more phantom studies to further validate the performance of the purposed method. This work is supported by a Varian MRA grant.« less

Signal quality enhancement using higher order wavelets for ultrasonic TOFD signals from austenitic stainless steel welds.

PubMed

Praveen, Angam; Vijayarekha, K; Abraham, Saju T; Venkatraman, B

2013-09-01

Time of flight diffraction (TOFD) technique is a well-developed ultrasonic non-destructive testing (NDT) method and has been applied successfully for accurate sizing of defects in metallic materials. This technique was developed in early 1970s as a means for accurate sizing and positioning of cracks in nuclear components became very popular in the late 1990s and is today being widely used in various industries for weld inspection. One of the main advantages of TOFD is that, apart from fast technique, it provides higher probability of detection for linear defects. Since TOFD is based on diffraction of sound waves from the extremities of the defect compared to reflection from planar faces as in pulse echo and phased array, the resultant signal would be quite weak and signal to noise ratio (SNR) low. In many cases the defect signal is submerged in this noise making it difficult for detection, positioning and sizing. Several signal processing methods such as digital filtering, Split Spectrum Processing (SSP), Hilbert Transform and Correlation techniques have been developed in order to suppress unwanted noise and enhance the quality of the defect signal which can thus be used for characterization of defects and the material. Wavelet Transform based thresholding techniques have been applied largely for de-noising of ultrasonic signals. However in this paper, higher order wavelets are used for analyzing the de-noising performance for TOFD signals obtained from Austenitic Stainless Steel welds. It is observed that higher order wavelets give greater SNR improvement compared to the lower order wavelets. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A universal denoising and peak picking algorithm for LC-MS based on matched filtration in the chromatographic time domain.

PubMed

Andreev, Victor P; Rejtar, Tomas; Chen, Hsuan-Shen; Moskovets, Eugene V; Ivanov, Alexander R; Karger, Barry L

2003-11-15

A new denoising and peak picking algorithm (MEND, matched filtration with experimental noise determination) for analysis of LC-MS data is described. The algorithm minimizes both random and chemical noise in order to determine MS peaks corresponding to sample components. Noise characteristics in the data set are experimentally determined and used for efficient denoising. MEND is shown to enable low-intensity peaks to be detected, thus providing additional useful information for sample analysis. The process of denoising, performed in the chromatographic time domain, does not distort peak shapes in the m/z domain, allowing accurate determination of MS peak centroids, including low-intensity peaks. MEND has been applied to denoising of LC-MALDI-TOF-MS and LC-ESI-TOF-MS data for tryptic digests of protein mixtures. MEND is shown to suppress chemical and random noise and baseline fluctuations, as well as filter out false peaks originating from the matrix (MALDI) or mobile phase (ESI). In addition, MEND is shown to be effective for protein expression analysis by allowing selection of a large number of differentially expressed ICAT pairs, due to increased signal-to-noise ratio and mass accuracy.

Adaptive threshold shearlet transform for surface microseismic data denoising

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tang, Na; Zhao, Xian; Li, Yue; Zhu, Dan

2018-06-01

Random noise suppression plays an important role in microseismic data processing. The microseismic data is often corrupted by strong random noise, which would directly influence identification and location of microseismic events. Shearlet transform is a new multiscale transform, which can effectively process the low magnitude of microseismic data. In shearlet domain, due to different distributions of valid signals and random noise, shearlet coefficients can be shrunk by threshold. Therefore, threshold is vital in suppressing random noise. The conventional threshold denoising algorithms usually use the same threshold to process all coefficients, which causes noise suppression inefficiency or valid signals loss. In order to solve above problems, we propose the adaptive threshold shearlet transform (ATST) for surface microseismic data denoising. In the new algorithm, we calculate the fundamental threshold for each direction subband firstly. In each direction subband, the adjustment factor is obtained according to each subband coefficient and its neighboring coefficients, in order to adaptively regulate the fundamental threshold for different shearlet coefficients. Finally we apply the adaptive threshold to deal with different shearlet coefficients. The experimental denoising results of synthetic records and field data illustrate that the proposed method exhibits better performance in suppressing random noise and preserving valid signal than the conventional shearlet denoising method.

Electrocardiogram signal denoising based on a new improved wavelet thresholding

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Han, Guoqiang; Xu, Zhijun

2016-08-01

Good quality electrocardiogram (ECG) is utilized by physicians for the interpretation and identification of physiological and pathological phenomena. In general, ECG signals may mix various noises such as baseline wander, power line interference, and electromagnetic interference in gathering and recording process. As ECG signals are non-stationary physiological signals, wavelet transform is investigated to be an effective tool to discard noises from corrupted signals. A new compromising threshold function called sigmoid function-based thresholding scheme is adopted in processing ECG signals. Compared with other methods such as hard/soft thresholding or other existing thresholding functions, the new algorithm has many advantages in the noise reduction of ECG signals. It perfectly overcomes the discontinuity at ±T of hard thresholding and reduces the fixed deviation of soft thresholding. The improved wavelet thresholding denoising can be proved to be more efficient than existing algorithms in ECG signal denoising. The signal to noise ratio, mean square error, and percent root mean square difference are calculated to verify the denoising performance as quantitative tools. The experimental results reveal that the waves including P, Q, R, and S waves of ECG signals after denoising coincide with the original ECG signals by employing the new proposed method.

An approach of point cloud denoising based on improved bilateral filtering

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zheng, Zeling; Jia, Songmin; Zhang, Guoliang; Li, Xiuzhi; Zhang, Xiangyin

2018-04-01

An omnidirectional mobile platform is designed for building point cloud based on an improved filtering algorithm which is employed to handle the depth image. First, the mobile platform can move flexibly and the control interface is convenient to control. Then, because the traditional bilateral filtering algorithm is time-consuming and inefficient, a novel method is proposed which called local bilateral filtering (LBF). LBF is applied to process depth image obtained by the Kinect sensor. The results show that the effect of removing noise is improved comparing with the bilateral filtering. In the condition of off-line, the color images and processed images are used to build point clouds. Finally, experimental results demonstrate that our method improves the speed of processing time of depth image and the effect of point cloud which has been built.

Denoising by coupled partial differential equations and extracting phase by backpropagation neural networks for electronic speckle pattern interferometry.

PubMed

Tang, Chen; Lu, Wenjing; Chen, Song; Zhang, Zhen; Li, Botao; Wang, Wenping; Han, Lin

2007-10-20

We extend and refine previous work [Appl. Opt. 46, 2907 (2007)]. Combining the coupled nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) denoising model with the ordinary differential equations enhancement method, we propose the new denoising and enhancing model for electronic speckle pattern interferometry (ESPI) fringe patterns. Meanwhile, we propose the backpropagation neural networks (BPNN) method to obtain unwrapped phase values based on a skeleton map instead of traditional interpolations. We test the introduced methods on the computer-simulated speckle ESPI fringe patterns and experimentally obtained fringe pattern, respectively. The experimental results show that the coupled nonlinear PDEs denoising model is capable of effectively removing noise, and the unwrapped phase values obtained by the BPNN method are much more accurate than those obtained by the well-known traditional interpolation. In addition, the accuracy of the BPNN method is adjustable by changing the parameters of networks such as the number of neurons.

ECG denoising with adaptive bionic wavelet transform.

PubMed

Sayadi, Omid; Shamsollahi, Mohammad Bagher

2006-01-01

In this paper a new ECG denoising scheme is proposed using a novel adaptive wavelet transform, named bionic wavelet transform (BWT), which had been first developed based on a model of the active auditory system. There has been some outstanding features with the BWT such as nonlinearity, high sensitivity and frequency selectivity, concentrated energy distribution and its ability to reconstruct signal via inverse transform but the most distinguishing characteristic of BWT is that its resolution in the time-frequency domain can be adaptively adjusted not only by the signal frequency but also by the signal instantaneous amplitude and its first-order differential. Besides by optimizing the BWT parameters parallel to modifying a new threshold value, one can handle ECG denoising with results comparing to those of wavelet transform (WT). Preliminary tests of BWT application to ECG denoising were constructed on the signals of MIT-BIH database which showed high performance of noise reduction.

Adaptive DSPI phase denoising using mutual information and 2D variational mode decomposition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xiao, Qiyang; Li, Jian; Wu, Sijin; Li, Weixian; Yang, Lianxiang; Dong, Mingli; Zeng, Zhoumo

2018-04-01

In digital speckle pattern interferometry (DSPI), noise interference leads to a low peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and measurement errors in the phase map. This paper proposes an adaptive DSPI phase denoising method based on two-dimensional variational mode decomposition (2D-VMD) and mutual information. Firstly, the DSPI phase map is subjected to 2D-VMD in order to obtain a series of band-limited intrinsic mode functions (BLIMFs). Then, on the basis of characteristics of the BLIMFs and in combination with mutual information, a self-adaptive denoising method is proposed to obtain noise-free components containing the primary phase information. The noise-free components are reconstructed to obtain the denoising DSPI phase map. Simulation and experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively reduce noise interference, giving a PSNR that is higher than that of two-dimensional empirical mode decomposition methods.

Adaptive Fourier decomposition based ECG denoising.

PubMed

Wang, Ze; Wan, Feng; Wong, Chi Man; Zhang, Liming

2016-10-01

A novel ECG denoising method is proposed based on the adaptive Fourier decomposition (AFD). The AFD decomposes a signal according to its energy distribution, thereby making this algorithm suitable for separating pure ECG signal and noise with overlapping frequency ranges but different energy distributions. A stop criterion for the iterative decomposition process in the AFD is calculated on the basis of the estimated signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the noisy signal. The proposed AFD-based method is validated by the synthetic ECG signal using an ECG model and also real ECG signals from the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia Database both with additive Gaussian white noise. Simulation results of the proposed method show better performance on the denoising and the QRS detection in comparing with major ECG denoising schemes based on the wavelet transform, the Stockwell transform, the empirical mode decomposition, and the ensemble empirical mode decomposition. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The ZpiM algorithm: a method for interferometric image reconstruction in SAR/SAS.

PubMed

Dias, José M B; Leitao, José M N

2002-01-01

This paper presents an effective algorithm for absolute phase (not simply modulo-2-pi) estimation from incomplete, noisy and modulo-2pi observations in interferometric aperture radar and sonar (InSAR/InSAS). The adopted framework is also representative of other applications such as optical interferometry, magnetic resonance imaging and diffraction tomography. The Bayesian viewpoint is adopted; the observation density is 2-pi-periodic and accounts for the interferometric pair decorrelation and system noise; the a priori probability of the absolute phase is modeled by a compound Gauss-Markov random field (CGMRF) tailored to piecewise smooth absolute phase images. We propose an iterative scheme for the computation of the maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) absolute phase estimate. Each iteration embodies a discrete optimization step (Z-step), implemented by network programming techniques and an iterative conditional modes (ICM) step (pi-step). Accordingly, the algorithm is termed ZpiM, where the letter M stands for maximization. An important contribution of the paper is the simultaneous implementation of phase unwrapping (inference of the 2pi-multiples) and smoothing (denoising of the observations). This improves considerably the accuracy of the absolute phase estimates compared to methods in which the data is low-pass filtered prior to unwrapping. A set of experimental results, comparing the proposed algorithm with alternative methods, illustrates the effectiveness of our approach.

Estimating weak ratiometric signals in imaging data. II. Meta-analysis with multiple, dual-channel datasets.

PubMed

Sornborger, Andrew; Broder, Josef; Majumder, Anirban; Srinivasamoorthy, Ganesh; Porter, Erika; Reagin, Sean S; Keith, Charles; Lauderdale, James D

2008-09-01

Ratiometric fluorescent indicators are used for making quantitative measurements of a variety of physiological variables. Their utility is often limited by noise. This is the second in a series of papers describing statistical methods for denoising ratiometric data with the aim of obtaining improved quantitative estimates of variables of interest. Here, we outline a statistical optimization method that is designed for the analysis of ratiometric imaging data in which multiple measurements have been taken of systems responding to the same stimulation protocol. This method takes advantage of correlated information across multiple datasets for objectively detecting and estimating ratiometric signals. We demonstrate our method by showing results of its application on multiple, ratiometric calcium imaging experiments.

XQ-NLM: Denoising Diffusion MRI Data via x-q Space Non-Local Patch Matching.

PubMed

Chen, Geng; Wu, Yafeng; Shen, Dinggang; Yap, Pew-Thian

2016-10-01

Noise is a major issue influencing quantitative analysis in diffusion MRI. The effects of noise can be reduced by repeated acquisitions, but this leads to long acquisition times that can be unrealistic in clinical settings. For this reason, post-acquisition denoising methods have been widely used to improve SNR. Among existing methods, non-local means (NLM) has been shown to produce good image quality with edge preservation. However, currently the application of NLM to diffusion MRI has been mostly focused on the spatial space (i.e., the x -space), despite the fact that diffusion data live in a combined space consisting of the x -space and the q -space (i.e., the space of wavevectors). In this paper, we propose to extend NLM to both x -space and q -space. We show how patch-matching, as required in NLM, can be performed concurrently in x-q space with the help of azimuthal equidistant projection and rotation invariant features. Extensive experiments on both synthetic and real data confirm that the proposed x-q space NLM (XQ-NLM) outperforms the classic NLM.

Comparative analysis of nonlinear dimensionality reduction techniques for breast MRI segmentation

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Akhbardeh, Alireza; Jacobs, Michael A.; Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology and Radiological Science, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland 21205

2012-04-15

Purpose: Visualization of anatomical structures using radiological imaging methods is an important tool in medicine to differentiate normal from pathological tissue and can generate large amounts of data for a radiologist to read. Integrating these large data sets is difficult and time-consuming. A new approach uses both supervised and unsupervised advanced machine learning techniques to visualize and segment radiological data. This study describes the application of a novel hybrid scheme, based on combining wavelet transform and nonlinear dimensionality reduction (NLDR) methods, to breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data using three well-established NLDR techniques, namely, ISOMAP, local linear embedding (LLE), andmore » diffusion maps (DfM), to perform a comparative performance analysis. Methods: Twenty-five breast lesion subjects were scanned using a 3T scanner. MRI sequences used were T1-weighted, T2-weighted, diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), and dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) imaging. The hybrid scheme consisted of two steps: preprocessing and postprocessing of the data. The preprocessing step was applied for B{sub 1} inhomogeneity correction, image registration, and wavelet-based image compression to match and denoise the data. In the postprocessing step, MRI parameters were considered data dimensions and the NLDR-based hybrid approach was applied to integrate the MRI parameters into a single image, termed the embedded image. This was achieved by mapping all pixel intensities from the higher dimension to a lower dimensional (embedded) space. For validation, the authors compared the hybrid NLDR with linear methods of principal component analysis (PCA) and multidimensional scaling (MDS) using synthetic data. For the clinical application, the authors used breast MRI data, comparison was performed using the postcontrast DCE MRI image and evaluating the congruence of the segmented lesions. Results: The NLDR-based hybrid approach was able to define and segment both synthetic and clinical data. In the synthetic data, the authors demonstrated the performance of the NLDR method compared with conventional linear DR methods. The NLDR approach enabled successful segmentation of the structures, whereas, in most cases, PCA and MDS failed. The NLDR approach was able to segment different breast tissue types with a high accuracy and the embedded image of the breast MRI data demonstrated fuzzy boundaries between the different types of breast tissue, i.e., fatty, glandular, and tissue with lesions (>86%). Conclusions: The proposed hybrid NLDR methods were able to segment clinical breast data with a high accuracy and construct an embedded image that visualized the contribution of different radiological parameters.« less

Impulsive noise suppression in color images based on the geodesic digital paths

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Smolka, Bogdan; Cyganek, Boguslaw

2015-02-01

In the paper a novel filtering design based on the concept of exploration of the pixel neighborhood by digital paths is presented. The paths start from the boundary of a filtering window and reach its center. The cost of transitions between adjacent pixels is defined in the hybrid spatial-color space. Then, an optimal path of minimum total cost, leading from pixels of the window's boundary to its center is determined. The cost of an optimal path serves as a degree of similarity of the central pixel to the samples from the local processing window. If a pixel is an outlier, then all the paths starting from the window's boundary will have high costs and the minimum one will also be high. The filter output is calculated as a weighted mean of the central pixel and an estimate constructed using the information on the minimum cost assigned to each image pixel. So, first the costs of optimal paths are used to build a smoothed image and in the second step the minimum cost of the central pixel is utilized for construction of the weights of a soft-switching scheme. The experiments performed on a set of standard color images, revealed that the efficiency of the proposed algorithm is superior to the state-of-the-art filtering techniques in terms of the objective restoration quality measures, especially for high noise contamination ratios. The proposed filter, due to its low computational complexity, can be applied for real time image denoising and also for the enhancement of video streams.

Fractal properties and denoising of lidar signals from cirrus clouds

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

van den Heuvel, J. C.; Driesenaar, M. L.; Lerou, R. J. L.

2000-02-01

Airborne lidar signals of cirrus clouds are analyzed to determine the cloud structure. Climate modeling and numerical weather prediction benefit from accurate modeling of cirrus clouds. Airborne lidar measurements of the European Lidar in Space Technology Experiment (ELITE) campaign were analyzed by combining shots to obtain the backscatter at constant altitude. The signal at high altitude was analyzed for horizontal structure of cirrus clouds. The power spectrum and the structure function show straight lines on a double logarithmic plot. This behavior is characteristic for a Brownian fractal. Wavelet analysis using the Haar wavelet confirms the fractal aspects. It is shown that the horizontal structure of cirrus can be described by a fractal with a dimension of 1.8 over length scales that vary 4 orders of magnitude. We use the fractal properties in a new denoising method. Denoising is required for future lidar measurements from space that have a low signal to noise ratio. Our wavelet denoising is based on the Haar wavelet and uses the statistical fractal properties of cirrus clouds in a method based on the maximum a posteriori (MAP) probability. This denoising based on wavelets is tested on airborne lidar signals from ELITE using added Gaussian noise. Superior results with respect to averaging are obtained.

Sparse magnetic resonance imaging reconstruction using the bregman iteration

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lee, Dong-Hoon; Hong, Cheol-Pyo; Lee, Man-Woo

2013-01-01

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) reconstruction needs many samples that are sequentially sampled by using phase encoding gradients in a MRI system. It is directly connected to the scan time for the MRI system and takes a long time. Therefore, many researchers have studied ways to reduce the scan time, especially, compressed sensing (CS), which is used for sparse images and reconstruction for fewer sampling datasets when the k-space is not fully sampled. Recently, an iterative technique based on the bregman method was developed for denoising. The bregman iteration method improves on total variation (TV) regularization by gradually recovering the fine-scale structures that are usually lost in TV regularization. In this study, we studied sparse sampling image reconstruction using the bregman iteration for a low-field MRI system to improve its temporal resolution and to validate its usefulness. The image was obtained with a 0.32 T MRI scanner (Magfinder II, SCIMEDIX, Korea) with a phantom and an in-vivo human brain in a head coil. We applied random k-space sampling, and we determined the sampling ratios by using half the fully sampled k-space. The bregman iteration was used to generate the final images based on the reduced data. We also calculated the root-mean-square-error (RMSE) values from error images that were obtained using various numbers of bregman iterations. Our reconstructed images using the bregman iteration for sparse sampling images showed good results compared with the original images. Moreover, the RMSE values showed that the sparse reconstructed phantom and the human images converged to the original images. We confirmed the feasibility of sparse sampling image reconstruction methods using the bregman iteration with a low-field MRI system and obtained good results. Although our results used half the sampling ratio, this method will be helpful in increasing the temporal resolution at low-field MRI systems.

Locally Based Kernel PLS Regression De-noising with Application to Event-Related Potentials

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Rosipal, Roman; Trejo, Leonard J.; Wheeler, Kevin; Tino, Peter

2002-01-01

The close relation of signal de-noising and regression problems dealing with the estimation of functions reflecting dependency between a set of inputs and dependent outputs corrupted with some level of noise have been employed in our approach.

Magnetic resonance image restoration via dictionary learning under spatially adaptive constraints.

PubMed

Wang, Shanshan; Xia, Yong; Dong, Pei; Feng, David Dagan; Luo, Jianhua; Huang, Qiu

2013-01-01

This paper proposes a spatially adaptive constrained dictionary learning (SAC-DL) algorithm for Rician noise removal in magnitude magnetic resonance (MR) images. This algorithm explores both the strength of dictionary learning to preserve image structures and the robustness of local variance estimation to remove signal-dependent Rician noise. The magnitude image is first separated into a number of partly overlapping image patches. The statistics of each patch are collected and analyzed to obtain a local noise variance. To better adapt to Rician noise, a correction factor is formulated with the local signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Finally, the trained dictionary is used to denoise each image patch under spatially adaptive constraints. The proposed algorithm has been compared to the popular nonlocal means (NLM) filtering and unbiased NLM (UNLM) algorithm on simulated T1-weighted, T2-weighted and PD-weighted MR images. Our results suggest that the SAC-DL algorithm preserves more image structures while effectively removing the noise than NLM and it is also superior to UNLM at low noise levels.

Speckle reduction in optical coherence tomography using two-step iteration method (Conference Presentation)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Xianghong; Liu, Xinyu; Wang, Nanshuo; Yu, Xiaojun; Bo, En; Chen, Si; Liu, Linbo

2017-02-01

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) provides high resolution and cross-sectional images of biological tissue and is widely used for diagnosis of ocular diseases. However, OCT images suffer from speckle noise, which typically considered as multiplicative noise in nature, reducing the image resolution and contrast. In this study, we propose a two-step iteration (TSI) method to suppress those noises. We first utilize augmented Lagrange method to recover a low-rank OCT image and remove additive Gaussian noise, and then employ the simple and efficient split Bregman method to solve the Total-Variation Denoising model. We validated such proposed method using images of swine, rabbit and human retina. Results demonstrate that our TSI method outperforms the other popular methods in achieving higher peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and structure similarity (SSIM) while preserving important structural details, such as tiny capillaries and thin layers in retinal OCT images. In addition, the results of our TSI method show clearer boundaries and maintains high image contrast, which facilitates better image interpretations and analyses.

Image-guided filtering for improving photoacoustic tomographic image reconstruction.

PubMed

Awasthi, Navchetan; Kalva, Sandeep Kumar; Pramanik, Manojit; Yalavarthy, Phaneendra K

2018-06-01

Several algorithms exist to solve the photoacoustic image reconstruction problem depending on the expected reconstructed image features. These reconstruction algorithms promote typically one feature, such as being smooth or sharp, in the output image. Combining these features using a guided filtering approach was attempted in this work, which requires an input and guiding image. This approach act as a postprocessing step to improve commonly used Tikhonov or total variational regularization method. The result obtained from linear backprojection was used as a guiding image to improve these results. Using both numerical and experimental phantom cases, it was shown that the proposed guided filtering approach was able to improve (as high as 11.23 dB) the signal-to-noise ratio of the reconstructed images with the added advantage being computationally efficient. This approach was compared with state-of-the-art basis pursuit deconvolution as well as standard denoising methods and shown to outperform them. (2018) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE).

Rayleigh-maximum-likelihood bilateral filter for ultrasound image enhancement.

PubMed

Li, Haiyan; Wu, Jun; Miao, Aimin; Yu, Pengfei; Chen, Jianhua; Zhang, Yufeng

2017-04-17

Ultrasound imaging plays an important role in computer diagnosis since it is non-invasive and cost-effective. However, ultrasound images are inevitably contaminated by noise and speckle during acquisition. Noise and speckle directly impact the physician to interpret the images and decrease the accuracy in clinical diagnosis. Denoising method is an important component to enhance the quality of ultrasound images; however, several limitations discourage the results because current denoising methods can remove noise while ignoring the statistical characteristics of speckle and thus undermining the effectiveness of despeckling, or vice versa. In addition, most existing algorithms do not identify noise, speckle or edge before removing noise or speckle, and thus they reduce noise and speckle while blurring edge details. Therefore, it is a challenging issue for the traditional methods to effectively remove noise and speckle in ultrasound images while preserving edge details. To overcome the above-mentioned limitations, a novel method, called Rayleigh-maximum-likelihood switching bilateral filter (RSBF) is proposed to enhance ultrasound images by two steps: noise, speckle and edge detection followed by filtering. Firstly, a sorted quadrant median vector scheme is utilized to calculate the reference median in a filtering window in comparison with the central pixel to classify the target pixel as noise, speckle or noise-free. Subsequently, the noise is removed by a bilateral filter and the speckle is suppressed by a Rayleigh-maximum-likelihood filter while the noise-free pixels are kept unchanged. To quantitatively evaluate the performance of the proposed method, synthetic ultrasound images contaminated by speckle are simulated by using the speckle model that is subjected to Rayleigh distribution. Thereafter, the corrupted synthetic images are generated by the original image multiplied with the Rayleigh distributed speckle of various signal to noise ratio (SNR) levels and added with Gaussian distributed noise. Meanwhile clinical breast ultrasound images are used to visually evaluate the effectiveness of the method. To examine the performance, comparison tests between the proposed RSBF and six state-of-the-art methods for ultrasound speckle removal are performed on simulated ultrasound images with various noise and speckle levels. The results of the proposed RSBF are satisfying since the Gaussian noise and the Rayleigh speckle are greatly suppressed. The proposed method can improve the SNRs of the enhanced images to nearly 15 and 13 dB compared with images corrupted by speckle as well as images contaminated by speckle and noise under various SNR levels, respectively. The RSBF is effective in enhancing edge while smoothing the speckle and noise in clinical ultrasound images. In the comparison experiments, the proposed method demonstrates its superiority in accuracy and robustness for denoising and edge preserving under various levels of noise and speckle in terms of visual quality as well as numeric metrics, such as peak signal to noise ratio, SNR and root mean squared error. The experimental results show that the proposed method is effective for removing the speckle and the background noise in ultrasound images. The main reason is that it performs a "detect and replace" two-step mechanism. The advantages of the proposed RBSF lie in two aspects. Firstly, each central pixel is classified as noise, speckle or noise-free texture according to the absolute difference between the target pixel and the reference median. Subsequently, the Rayleigh-maximum-likelihood filter and the bilateral filter are switched to eliminate speckle and noise, respectively, while the noise-free pixels are unaltered. Therefore, it is implemented with better accuracy and robustness than the traditional methods. Generally, these traits declare that the proposed RSBF would have significant clinical application.

Spectral filtering of gradient for l2-norm frequency-domain elastic waveform inversion

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Oh, Ju-Won; Min, Dong-Joo

2013-05-01

To enhance the robustness of the l2-norm elastic full-waveform inversion (FWI), we propose a denoise function that is incorporated into single-frequency gradients. Because field data are noisy and modelled data are noise-free, the denoise function is designed based on the ratio of modelled data to field data summed over shots and receivers. We first take the sums of the modelled data and field data over shots, then take the sums of the absolute values of the resultant modelled data and field data over the receivers. Due to the monochromatic property of wavefields at each frequency, signals in both modelled and field data tend to be cancelled out or maintained, whereas certain types of noise, particularly random noise, can be amplified in field data. As a result, the spectral distribution of the denoise function is inversely proportional to the ratio of noise to signal at each frequency, which helps prevent the noise-dominant gradients from contributing to model parameter updates. Numerical examples show that the spectral distribution of the denoise function resembles a frequency filter that is determined by the spectrum of the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio during the inversion process, with little human intervention. The denoise function is applied to the elastic FWI of synthetic data, with three types of random noise generated by the modified version of the Marmousi-2 model: white, low-frequency and high-frequency random noises. Based on the spectrum of S/N ratios at each frequency, the denoise function mainly suppresses noise-dominant single-frequency gradients, which improves the inversion results at the cost of spatial resolution.

Computer-assisted diagnostic tool to quantify the pulmonary veins in sickle cell associated pulmonary hypertension

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jajamovich, Guido H.; Pamulapati, Vivek; Alam, Shoaib; Mehari, Alem; Kato, Gregory J.; Wood, Bradford J.; Linguraru, Marius George

2012-03-01

Pulmonary hypertension is a common cause of death among patients with sickle cell disease. This study investigates the use of pulmonary vein analysis to assist the diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension non-invasively with CT-Angiography images. The characterization of the pulmonary veins from CT presents two main challenges. Firstly, the number of pulmonary veins is unknown a priori and secondly, the contrast material is degraded when reaching the pulmonary veins, making the edges of these vessels to appear faint. Each image is first denoised and a fast marching approach is used to segment the left atrium and pulmonary veins. Afterward, a geodesic active contour is employed to isolate the left atrium. A thinning technique is then used to extract the skeleton of the atrium and the veins. The locations of the pulmonary veins ostia are determined by the intersection of the skeleton and the contour of the atrium. The diameters of the pulmonary veins are measured in each vein at fixed distances from the corresponding ostium, and for each distance, the sum of the diameters of all the veins is computed. These indicators are shown to be significantly larger in sickle-cell patients with pulmonary hypertension as compared to controls (p-values < 0.01).

CUDA Optimization Strategies for Compute- and Memory-Bound Neuroimaging Algorithms

PubMed Central

Lee, Daren; Dinov, Ivo; Dong, Bin; Gutman, Boris; Yanovsky, Igor; Toga, Arthur W.

2011-01-01

As neuroimaging algorithms and technology continue to grow faster than CPU performance in complexity and image resolution, data-parallel computing methods will be increasingly important. The high performance, data-parallel architecture of modern graphical processing units (GPUs) can reduce computational times by orders of magnitude. However, its massively threaded architecture introduces challenges when GPU resources are exceeded. This paper presents optimization strategies for compute- and memory-bound algorithms for the CUDA architecture. For compute-bound algorithms, the registers are reduced through variable reuse via shared memory and the data throughput is increased through heavier thread workloads and maximizing the thread configuration for a single thread block per multiprocessor. For memory-bound algorithms, fitting the data into the fast but limited GPU resources is achieved through reorganizing the data into self-contained structures and employing a multi-pass approach. Memory latencies are reduced by selecting memory resources whose cache performance are optimized for the algorithm's access patterns. We demonstrate the strategies on two computationally expensive algorithms and achieve optimized GPU implementations that perform up to 6× faster than unoptimized ones. Compared to CPU implementations, we achieve peak GPU speedups of 129× for the 3D unbiased nonlinear image registration technique and 93× for the non-local means surface denoising algorithm. PMID:21159404

CUDA optimization strategies for compute- and memory-bound neuroimaging algorithms.

PubMed

Lee, Daren; Dinov, Ivo; Dong, Bin; Gutman, Boris; Yanovsky, Igor; Toga, Arthur W

2012-06-01

As neuroimaging algorithms and technology continue to grow faster than CPU performance in complexity and image resolution, data-parallel computing methods will be increasingly important. The high performance, data-parallel architecture of modern graphical processing units (GPUs) can reduce computational times by orders of magnitude. However, its massively threaded architecture introduces challenges when GPU resources are exceeded. This paper presents optimization strategies for compute- and memory-bound algorithms for the CUDA architecture. For compute-bound algorithms, the registers are reduced through variable reuse via shared memory and the data throughput is increased through heavier thread workloads and maximizing the thread configuration for a single thread block per multiprocessor. For memory-bound algorithms, fitting the data into the fast but limited GPU resources is achieved through reorganizing the data into self-contained structures and employing a multi-pass approach. Memory latencies are reduced by selecting memory resources whose cache performance are optimized for the algorithm's access patterns. We demonstrate the strategies on two computationally expensive algorithms and achieve optimized GPU implementations that perform up to 6× faster than unoptimized ones. Compared to CPU implementations, we achieve peak GPU speedups of 129× for the 3D unbiased nonlinear image registration technique and 93× for the non-local means surface denoising algorithm. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

SU-C-207-05: A Comparative Study of Noise-Reduction Algorithms for Low-Dose Cone-Beam Computed Tomography

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Mukherjee, S; Yao, W

2015-06-15

Purpose: To study different noise-reduction algorithms and to improve the image quality of low dose cone beam CT for patient positioning in radiation therapy. Methods: In low-dose cone-beam CT, the reconstructed image is contaminated with excessive quantum noise. In this study, three well-developed noise reduction algorithms namely, a) penalized weighted least square (PWLS) method, b) split-Bregman total variation (TV) method, and c) compressed sensing (CS) method were studied and applied to the images of a computer–simulated “Shepp-Logan” phantom and a physical CATPHAN phantom. Up to 20% additive Gaussian noise was added to the Shepp-Logan phantom. The CATPHAN phantom was scannedmore » by a Varian OBI system with 100 kVp, 4 ms and 20 mA. For comparing the performance of these algorithms, peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) of the denoised images was computed. Results: The algorithms were shown to have the potential in reducing the noise level for low-dose CBCT images. For Shepp-Logan phantom, an improvement of PSNR of 2 dB, 3.1 dB and 4 dB was observed using PWLS, TV and CS respectively, while for CATPHAN, the improvement was 1.2 dB, 1.8 dB and 2.1 dB, respectively. Conclusion: Penalized weighted least square, total variation and compressed sensing methods were studied and compared for reducing the noise on a simulated phantom and a physical phantom scanned by low-dose CBCT. The techniques have shown promising results for noise reduction in terms of PSNR improvement. However, reducing the noise without compromising the smoothness and resolution of the image needs more extensive research.« less

iSAP: Interactive Sparse Astronomical Data Analysis Packages

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fourt, O.; Starck, J.-L.; Sureau, F.; Bobin, J.; Moudden, Y.; Abrial, P.; Schmitt, J.

2013-03-01

iSAP consists of three programs, written in IDL, which together are useful for spherical data analysis. MR/S (MultiResolution on the Sphere) contains routines for wavelet, ridgelet and curvelet transform on the sphere, and applications such denoising on the sphere using wavelets and/or curvelets, Gaussianity tests and Independent Component Analysis on the Sphere. MR/S has been designed for the PLANCK project, but can be used for many other applications. SparsePol (Polarized Spherical Wavelets and Curvelets) has routines for polarized wavelet, polarized ridgelet and polarized curvelet transform on the sphere, and applications such denoising on the sphere using wavelets and/or curvelets, Gaussianity tests and blind source separation on the Sphere. SparsePol has been designed for the PLANCK project. MS-VSTS (Multi-Scale Variance Stabilizing Transform on the Sphere), designed initially for the FERMI project, is useful for spherical mono-channel and multi-channel data analysis when the data are contaminated by a Poisson noise. It contains routines for wavelet/curvelet denoising, wavelet deconvolution, multichannel wavelet denoising and deconvolution.

AMA- and RWE- Based Adaptive Kalman Filter for Denoising Fiber Optic Gyroscope Drift Signal

PubMed Central

Yang, Gongliu; Liu, Yuanyuan; Li, Ming; Song, Shunguang

2015-01-01

An improved double-factor adaptive Kalman filter called AMA-RWE-DFAKF is proposed to denoise fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) drift signal in both static and dynamic conditions. The first factor is Kalman gain updated by random weighting estimation (RWE) of the covariance matrix of innovation sequence at any time to ensure the lowest noise level of output, but the inertia of KF response increases in dynamic condition. To decrease the inertia, the second factor is the covariance matrix of predicted state vector adjusted by RWE only when discontinuities are detected by adaptive moving average (AMA).The AMA-RWE-DFAKF is applied for denoising FOG static and dynamic signals, its performance is compared with conventional KF (CKF), RWE-based adaptive KF with gain correction (RWE-AKFG), AMA- and RWE- based dual mode adaptive KF (AMA-RWE-DMAKF). Results of Allan variance on static signal and root mean square error (RMSE) on dynamic signal show that this proposed algorithm outperforms all the considered methods in denoising FOG signal. PMID:26512665

AMA- and RWE- Based Adaptive Kalman Filter for Denoising Fiber Optic Gyroscope Drift Signal.

PubMed

Yang, Gongliu; Liu, Yuanyuan; Li, Ming; Song, Shunguang

2015-10-23

An improved double-factor adaptive Kalman filter called AMA-RWE-DFAKF is proposed to denoise fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) drift signal in both static and dynamic conditions. The first factor is Kalman gain updated by random weighting estimation (RWE) of the covariance matrix of innovation sequence at any time to ensure the lowest noise level of output, but the inertia of KF response increases in dynamic condition. To decrease the inertia, the second factor is the covariance matrix of predicted state vector adjusted by RWE only when discontinuities are detected by adaptive moving average (AMA).The AMA-RWE-DFAKF is applied for denoising FOG static and dynamic signals, its performance is compared with conventional KF (CKF), RWE-based adaptive KF with gain correction (RWE-AKFG), AMA- and RWE- based dual mode adaptive KF (AMA-RWE-DMAKF). Results of Allan variance on static signal and root mean square error (RMSE) on dynamic signal show that this proposed algorithm outperforms all the considered methods in denoising FOG signal.

SVD and Hankel matrix based de-noising approach for ball bearing fault detection and its assessment using artificial faults

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Golafshan, Reza; Yuce Sanliturk, Kenan

2016-03-01

Ball bearings remain one of the most crucial components in industrial machines and due to their critical role, it is of great importance to monitor their conditions under operation. However, due to the background noise in acquired signals, it is not always possible to identify probable faults. This incapability in identifying the faults makes the de-noising process one of the most essential steps in the field of Condition Monitoring (CM) and fault detection. In the present study, Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) and Hankel matrix based de-noising process is successfully applied to the ball bearing time domain vibration signals as well as to their spectrums for the elimination of the background noise and the improvement the reliability of the fault detection process. The test cases conducted using experimental as well as the simulated vibration signals demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed de-noising approach for the ball bearing fault detection.

Denoising embolic Doppler ultrasound signals using Dual Tree Complex Discrete Wavelet Transform.

PubMed

Serbes, Gorkem; Aydin, Nizamettin

2010-01-01

Early and accurate detection of asymptomatic emboli is important for monitoring of preventive therapy in stroke-prone patients. One of the problems in detection of emboli is the identification of an embolic signal caused by very small emboli. The amplitude of the embolic signal may be so small that advanced processing methods are required to distinguish these signals from Doppler signals arising from red blood cells. In this study instead of conventional discrete wavelet transform, the Dual Tree Complex Discrete Wavelet Transform was used for denoising embolic signals. Performances of both approaches were compared. Unlike the conventional discrete wavelet transform discrete complex wavelet transform is a shift invariant transform with limited redundancy. Results demonstrate that the Dual Tree Complex Discrete Wavelet Transform based denoising outperforms conventional discrete wavelet denoising. Approximately 8 dB improvement is obtained by using the Dual Tree Complex Discrete Wavelet Transform compared to the improvement provided by the conventional Discrete Wavelet Transform (less than 5 dB).

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Na, Man Gyun; Oh, Seungrohk

A neuro-fuzzy inference system combined with the wavelet denoising, principal component analysis (PCA), and sequential probability ratio test (SPRT) methods has been developed to monitor the relevant sensor using the information of other sensors. The parameters of the neuro-fuzzy inference system that estimates the relevant sensor signal are optimized by a genetic algorithm and a least-squares algorithm. The wavelet denoising technique was applied to remove noise components in input signals into the neuro-fuzzy system. By reducing the dimension of an input space into the neuro-fuzzy system without losing a significant amount of information, the PCA was used to reduce themore » time necessary to train the neuro-fuzzy system, simplify the structure of the neuro-fuzzy inference system, and also, make easy the selection of the input signals into the neuro-fuzzy system. By using the residual signals between the estimated signals and the measured signals, the SPRT is applied to detect whether the sensors are degraded or not. The proposed sensor-monitoring algorithm was verified through applications to the pressurizer water level, the pressurizer pressure, and the hot-leg temperature sensors in pressurized water reactors.« less

Wavelet transform processing applied to partial discharge evaluation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Macedo, E. C. T.; Araújo, D. B.; da Costa, E. G.; Freire, R. C. S.; Lopes, W. T. A.; Torres, I. S. M.; de Souza Neto, J. M. R.; Bhatti, S. A.; Glover, I. A.

2012-05-01

Partial Discharge (PD) is characterized by high frequency current pulses that occur in high voltage (HV) electrical equipments originated from gas ionization process when damaged insulation is submitted to high values of electric field [1]. PD monitoring is a useful method of assessing the aging degree of the insulation, manufacturing defects or chemical/mechanical damage. Many sources of noise (e.g. radio transmissions, commutator noise from rotating machines, power electronics switching circuits, corona discharge, etc.) can directly affect the PD estimation. Among the many mathematical techniques that can be applied to de-noise PD signals, the wavelet transform is one of the most powerful. It can simultaneously supply information about the pulse occurrence, time and pulse spectrum, and also de-noise in-field measured PD signals. In this paper is described the application of wavelet transform in the suppression of the main types of noise that can affect the observation and analysis of PD signals in high voltage apparatus. In addition, is presented a study that indicates the appropriated mother-wavelet for this application based on the cross-correlation factor.

Fuzzy Filtering Method for Color Videos Corrupted by Additive Noise

PubMed Central

Ponomaryov, Volodymyr I.; Montenegro-Monroy, Hector; Nino-de-Rivera, Luis

2014-01-01

A novel method for the denoising of color videos corrupted by additive noise is presented in this paper. The proposed technique consists of three principal filtering steps: spatial, spatiotemporal, and spatial postprocessing. In contrast to other state-of-the-art algorithms, during the first spatial step, the eight gradient values in different directions for pixels located in the vicinity of a central pixel as well as the R, G, and B channel correlation between the analogous pixels in different color bands are taken into account. These gradient values give the information about the level of contamination then the designed fuzzy rules are used to preserve the image features (textures, edges, sharpness, chromatic properties, etc.). In the second step, two neighboring video frames are processed together. Possible local motions between neighboring frames are estimated using block matching procedure in eight directions to perform interframe filtering. In the final step, the edges and smoothed regions in a current frame are distinguished for final postprocessing filtering. Numerous simulation results confirm that this novel 3D fuzzy method performs better than other state-of-the-art techniques in terms of objective criteria (PSNR, MAE, NCD, and SSIM) as well as subjective perception via the human vision system in the different color videos. PMID:24688428

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Daniela Ushizima, Wes Bethel

Quant-CT is currently a plugin to ImageJ, designed as a Java-class that provides control mechanism for the user to choose volumes of interest within porous material, followed by the selection of image subsamples for automated tuning of parameters for filters and classifiers, and finally measurement of material geometry, porosity, and visualization. Denoising is mandatory before any image interpretation, and we implemented a new 3D java code that performs bilateral filtering of data. Segmentation of the dense material is essential before any quantifications about geological sample structure, and we invented new schemes to deal with over segmentation when using statistical regionmore » merging algorithm to pull out grains that compose imaged material. It make uses of ImageJ API and other standard and thirty-party APIs. Quant-CT conception started in 2011 under Scidac-e sponsor, and details of the first prototype were documented in publications below. While it is used right now for microtomography images, it can potentially be used by anybody with 3D image data obtained by experiment or produced by simulation.« less

Efficiency analysis of color image filtering

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fevralev, Dmitriy V.; Ponomarenko, Nikolay N.; Lukin, Vladimir V.; Abramov, Sergey K.; Egiazarian, Karen O.; Astola, Jaakko T.

2011-12-01

This article addresses under which conditions filtering can visibly improve the image quality. The key points are the following. First, we analyze filtering efficiency for 25 test images, from the color image database TID2008. This database allows assessing filter efficiency for images corrupted by different noise types for several levels of noise variance. Second, the limit of filtering efficiency is determined for independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) additive noise and compared to the output mean square error of state-of-the-art filters. Third, component-wise and vector denoising is studied, where the latter approach is demonstrated to be more efficient. Fourth, using of modern visual quality metrics, we determine that for which levels of i.i.d. and spatially correlated noise the noise in original images or residual noise and distortions because of filtering in output images are practically invisible. We also demonstrate that it is possible to roughly estimate whether or not the visual quality can clearly be improved by filtering.

An explorative chemometric approach applied to hyperspectral images for the study of illuminated manuscripts

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Catelli, Emilio; Randeberg, Lise Lyngsnes; Alsberg, Bjørn Kåre; Gebremariam, Kidane Fanta; Bracci, Silvano

2017-04-01

Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) is a fast non-invasive imaging technology recently applied in the field of art conservation. With the help of chemometrics, important information about the spectral properties and spatial distribution of pigments can be extracted from HSI data. With the intent of expanding the applications of chemometrics to the interpretation of hyperspectral images of historical documents, and, at the same time, to study the colorants and their spatial distribution on ancient illuminated manuscripts, an explorative chemometric approach is here presented. The method makes use of chemometric tools for spectral de-noising (minimum noise fraction (MNF)) and image analysis (multivariate image analysis (MIA) and iterative key set factor analysis (IKSFA)/spectral angle mapper (SAM)) which have given an efficient separation, classification and mapping of colorants from visible-near-infrared (VNIR) hyperspectral images of an ancient illuminated fragment. The identification of colorants was achieved by extracting and interpreting the VNIR spectra as well as by using a portable X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometer.

Super-Resolution Reconstruction of Remote Sensing Images Using Multifractal Analysis

PubMed Central

Hu, Mao-Gui; Wang, Jin-Feng; Ge, Yong

2009-01-01

Satellite remote sensing (RS) is an important contributor to Earth observation, providing various kinds of imagery every day, but low spatial resolution remains a critical bottleneck in a lot of applications, restricting higher spatial resolution analysis (e.g., intra-urban). In this study, a multifractal-based super-resolution reconstruction method is proposed to alleviate this problem. The multifractal characteristic is common in Nature. The self-similarity or self-affinity presented in the image is useful to estimate details at larger and smaller scales than the original. We first look for the presence of multifractal characteristics in the images. Then we estimate parameters of the information transfer function and noise of the low resolution image. Finally, a noise-free, spatial resolution-enhanced image is generated by a fractal coding-based denoising and downscaling method. The empirical case shows that the reconstructed super-resolution image performs well in detail enhancement. This method is not only useful for remote sensing in investigating Earth, but also for other images with multifractal characteristics. PMID:22291530

On the importance of mathematical methods for analysis of MALDI-imaging mass spectrometry data.

PubMed

Trede, Dennis; Kobarg, Jan Hendrik; Oetjen, Janina; Thiele, Herbert; Maass, Peter; Alexandrov, Theodore

2012-03-21

In the last decade, matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) imaging mass spectrometry (IMS), also called as MALDI-imaging, has proven its potential in proteomics and was successfully applied to various types of biomedical problems, in particular to histopathological label-free analysis of tissue sections. In histopathology, MALDI-imaging is used as a general analytic tool revealing the functional proteomic structure of tissue sections, and as a discovery tool for detecting new biomarkers discriminating a region annotated by an experienced histologist, in particular, for cancer studies. A typical MALDI-imaging data set contains 10⁸ to 10⁹ intensity values occupying more than 1 GB. Analysis and interpretation of such huge amount of data is a mathematically, statistically and computationally challenging problem. In this paper we overview some computational methods for analysis of MALDI-imaging data sets. We discuss the importance of data preprocessing, which typically includes normalization, baseline removal and peak picking, and hightlight the importance of image denoising when visualizing IMS data.

On the Importance of Mathematical Methods for Analysis of MALDI-Imaging Mass Spectrometry Data.

PubMed

Trede, Dennis; Kobarg, Jan Hendrik; Oetjen, Janina; Thiele, Herbert; Maass, Peter; Alexandrov, Theodore

2012-03-01

In the last decade, matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) imaging mass spectrometry (IMS), also called as MALDI-imaging, has proven its potential in proteomics and was successfully applied to various types of biomedical problems, in particular to histopathological label-free analysis of tissue sections. In histopathology, MALDI-imaging is used as a general analytic tool revealing the functional proteomic structure of tissue sections, and as a discovery tool for detecting new biomarkers discriminating a region annotated by an experienced histologist, in particular, for cancer studies. A typical MALDI-imaging data set contains 108 to 109 intensity values occupying more than 1 GB. Analysis and interpretation of such huge amount of data is a mathematically, statistically and computationally challenging problem. In this paper we overview some computational methods for analysis of MALDI-imaging data sets. We discuss the importance of data preprocessing, which typically includes normalization, baseline removal and peak picking, and hightlight the importance of image denoising when visualizing IMS data.

A CANDLE for a deeper in vivo insight

PubMed Central

Coupé, Pierrick; Munz, Martin; Manjón, Jose V; Ruthazer, Edward S; Louis Collins, D.

2012-01-01

A new Collaborative Approach for eNhanced Denoising under Low-light Excitation (CANDLE) is introduced for the processing of 3D laser scanning multiphoton microscopy images. CANDLE is designed to be robust for low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions typically encountered when imaging deep in scattering biological specimens. Based on an optimized non-local means filter involving the comparison of filtered patches, CANDLE locally adapts the amount of smoothing in order to deal with the noise inhomogeneity inherent to laser scanning fluorescence microscopy images. An extensive validation on synthetic data, images acquired on microspheres and in vivo images is presented. These experiments show that the CANDLE filter obtained competitive results compared to a state-of-the-art method and a locally adaptive optimized nonlocal means filter, especially under low SNR conditions (PSNR<8dB). Finally, the deeper imaging capabilities enabled by the proposed filter are demonstrated on deep tissue in vivo images of neurons and fine axonal processes in the Xenopus tadpole brain. PMID:22341767

Robust and fast-converging level set method for side-scan sonar image segmentation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Yan; Li, Qingwu; Huo, Guanying

2017-11-01

A robust and fast-converging level set method is proposed for side-scan sonar (SSS) image segmentation. First, the noise in each sonar image is removed using the adaptive nonlinear complex diffusion filter. Second, k-means clustering is used to obtain the initial presegmentation image from the denoised image, and then the distance maps of the initial contours are reinitialized to guarantee the accuracy of the numerical calculation used in the level set evolution. Finally, the satisfactory segmentation is achieved using a robust variational level set model, where the evolution control parameters are generated by the presegmentation. The proposed method is successfully applied to both synthetic image with speckle noise and real SSS images. Experimental results show that the proposed method needs much less iteration and therefore is much faster than the fuzzy local information c-means clustering method, the level set method using a gamma observation model, and the enhanced region-scalable fitting method. Moreover, the proposed method can usually obtain more accurate segmentation results compared with other methods.

Applications of nonlocal means algorithm in low-dose X-ray CT image processing and reconstruction: a review

PubMed Central

Zhang, Hao; Zeng, Dong; Zhang, Hua; Wang, Jing; Liang, Zhengrong

2017-01-01

Low-dose X-ray computed tomography (LDCT) imaging is highly recommended for use in the clinic because of growing concerns over excessive radiation exposure. However, the CT images reconstructed by the conventional filtered back-projection (FBP) method from low-dose acquisitions may be severely degraded with noise and streak artifacts due to excessive X-ray quantum noise, or with view-aliasing artifacts due to insufficient angular sampling. In 2005, the nonlocal means (NLM) algorithm was introduced as a non-iterative edge-preserving filter to denoise natural images corrupted by additive Gaussian noise, and showed superior performance. It has since been adapted and applied to many other image types and various inverse problems. This paper specifically reviews the applications of the NLM algorithm in LDCT image processing and reconstruction, and explicitly demonstrates its improving effects on the reconstructed CT image quality from low-dose acquisitions. The effectiveness of these applications on LDCT and their relative performance are described in detail. PMID:28303644

Principal component and spatial correlation analysis of spectroscopic-imaging data in scanning probe microscopy.

PubMed

Jesse, Stephen; Kalinin, Sergei V

2009-02-25

An approach for the analysis of multi-dimensional, spectroscopic-imaging data based on principal component analysis (PCA) is explored. PCA selects and ranks relevant response components based on variance within the data. It is shown that for examples with small relative variations between spectra, the first few PCA components closely coincide with results obtained using model fitting, and this is achieved at rates approximately four orders of magnitude faster. For cases with strong response variations, PCA allows an effective approach to rapidly process, de-noise, and compress data. The prospects for PCA combined with correlation function analysis of component maps as a universal tool for data analysis and representation in microscopy are discussed.

Flowing Dunes of Shangri-La Denoised

NASA Image and Video Library

2016-09-07

This radar image of the Shangri-La Sand Sea on Titan from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows hundreds of sand dunes are visible as dark lines snaking across the surface. These dunes display patterns of undulation and divergence around elevated mountains (which appear bright to the radar), thereby showing the direction of wind and sand transport on the surface. Sands being carried from left to right (west to east) cannot surmount the tallest obstacles; instead, they are directed through chutes and canyons between the tall features, evident in thin, blade-like, isolated dunes between bright some features. Once sands have passed around the obstacles, they resume their downwind course, at first collecting into small, patchy dunes and then organizing into larger, more pervasive linear forms, before being halted once again by obstacles. These patterns reveal the effects not only of wind -- perhaps even modern winds if the dunes are actively moving today -- but also the effects of underlying bedrock and surrounding topography. Dunes across the solar system aid in our understanding of underlying topography, winds and climate, past and present. Similar patterns can be seen in dunes of the Great Sandy Desert in Australia, where dunes undulate broadly across the uneven terrain and are halted at the margins of sand-trapping lakes. The dune orientations correlate generally with the direction of current trade winds, and reveal that winds must have been similar back when the dunes formed, during the Pleistocene glacial and interglacial periods. The image was taken by the Cassini Synthetic Aperture radar (SAR) on July 25, 2016 during the mission's 122nd targeted Titan encounter. The image has been modified by the denoising method described in A. Lucas, JGR:Planets (2014). http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA20711

WE-FG-207B-04: Noise Suppression for Energy-Resolved CT Via Variance Weighted Non-Local Filtration

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Harms, J; Zhu, L

Purpose: The photon starvation problem is exacerbated in energy-resolved CT, since the detected photons are shared by multiple energy channels. Using pixel similarity-based non-local filtration, we aim to produce accurate and high-resolution energy-resolved CT images with significantly reduced noise. Methods: Averaging CT images reconstructed from different energy channels reduces noise at the price of losing spectral information, while conventional denoising techniques inevitably degrade image resolution. Inspired by the fact that CT images of the same object at different energies share the same structures, we aim to reduce noise of energy-resolved CT by averaging only pixels of similar materials - amore » non-local filtration technique. For each CT image, an empirical exponential model is used to calculate the material similarity between two pixels based on their CT values and the similarity values are organized in a matrix form. A final similarity matrix is generated by averaging these similarity matrices, with weights inversely proportional to the estimated total noise variance in the sinogram of different energy channels. Noise suppression is achieved for each energy channel via multiplying the image vector by the similarity matrix. Results: Multiple scans on a tabletop CT system are used to simulate 6-channel energy-resolved CT, with energies ranging from 75 to 125 kVp. On a low-dose acquisition at 15 mA of the Catphan©600 phantom, our method achieves the same image spatial resolution as a high-dose scan at 80 mA with a noise standard deviation (STD) lower by a factor of >2. Compared with another non-local noise suppression algorithm (ndiNLM), the proposed algorithms obtains images with substantially improved resolution at the same level of noise reduction. Conclusion: We propose a noise-suppression method for energy-resolved CT. Our method takes full advantage of the additional structural information provided by energy-resolved CT and preserves image values at each energy level. Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute Of Biomedical Imaging And Bioengineering of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R21EB019597. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.« less

Earth Surface Monitoring with COSI-Corr, Techniques and Applications

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Leprince, S.; Ayoub, F.; Avouac, J.

2009-12-01

Co-registration of Optically Sensed Images and Correlation (COSI-Corr) is a software package developed at the California Institute of Technology (USA) for accurate geometrical processing of optical satellite and aerial imagery. Initially developed for the measurement of co-seismic ground deformation using optical imagery, COSI-Corr is now used for a wide range of applications in Earth Sciences, which take advantage of the software capability to co-register, with very high accuracy, images taken from different sensors and acquired at different times. As long as a sensor is supported in COSI-Corr, all images between the supported sensors can be accurately orthorectified and co-registered. For example, it is possible to co-register a series of SPOT images, a series of aerial photographs, as well as to register a series of aerial photographs with a series of SPOT images, etc... Currently supported sensors include the SPOT 1-5, Quickbird, Worldview 1 and Formosat 2 satellites, the ASTER instrument, and frame camera acquisitions from e.g., aerial survey or declassified satellite imagery. Potential applications include accurate change detection between multi-temporal and multi-spectral images, and the calibration of pushbroom cameras. In particular, COSI-Corr provides a powerful correlation tool, which allows for accurate estimation of surface displacement. The accuracy depends on many factors (e.g., cloud, snow, and vegetation cover, shadows, temporal changes in general, steadiness of the imaging platform, defects of the imaging system, etc...) but in practice, the standard deviation of the measurements obtained from the correlation of mutli-temporal images is typically around 1/20 to 1/10 of the pixel size. The software package also includes post-processing tools such as denoising, destriping, and stacking tools to facilitate data interpretation. Examples drawn from current research in, e.g., seismotectonics, glaciology, and geomorphology will be presented. COSI-Corr is developed in IDL (Interactive Data Language), integrated under the user friendly interface ENVI (Environment for Visualizing Images), and is distributed free of charge for academic research purposes.

Joint denoising, demosaicing, and chromatic aberration correction for UHD video

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jovanov, Ljubomir; Philips, Wilfried; Damstra, Klaas Jan; Ellenbroek, Frank

2017-09-01

High-resolution video capture is crucial for numerous applications such as surveillance, security, industrial inspection, medical imaging and digital entertainment. In the last two decades, we are witnessing a dramatic increase of the spatial resolution and the maximal frame rate of video capturing devices. In order to achieve further resolution increase, numerous challenges will be facing us. Due to the reduced size of the pixel, the amount of light also reduces, leading to the increased noise level. Moreover, the reduced pixel size makes the lens imprecisions more pronounced, which especially applies to chromatic aberrations. Even in the case when high quality lenses are used some chromatic aberration artefacts will remain. Next, noise level additionally increases due to the higher frame rates. To reduce the complexity and the price of the camera, one sensor captures all three colors, by relying on Color Filter Arrays. In order to obtain full resolution color image, missing color components have to be interpolated, i.e. demosaicked, which is more challenging than in the case of lower resolution, due to the increased noise and aberrations. In this paper, we propose a new method, which jointly performs chromatic aberration correction, denoising and demosaicking. By jointly performing the reduction of all artefacts, we are reducing the overall complexity of the system and the introduction of new artefacts. In order to reduce possible flicker we also perform temporal video enhancement. We evaluate the proposed method on a number of publicly available UHD sequences and on sequences recorded in our studio.

Automatic Fabric Defect Detection with a Multi-Scale Convolutional Denoising Autoencoder Network Model.

PubMed

Mei, Shuang; Wang, Yudan; Wen, Guojun

2018-04-02

Fabric defect detection is a necessary and essential step of quality control in the textile manufacturing industry. Traditional fabric inspections are usually performed by manual visual methods, which are low in efficiency and poor in precision for long-term industrial applications. In this paper, we propose an unsupervised learning-based automated approach to detect and localize fabric defects without any manual intervention. This approach is used to reconstruct image patches with a convolutional denoising autoencoder network at multiple Gaussian pyramid levels and to synthesize detection results from the corresponding resolution channels. The reconstruction residual of each image patch is used as the indicator for direct pixel-wise prediction. By segmenting and synthesizing the reconstruction residual map at each resolution level, the final inspection result can be generated. This newly developed method has several prominent advantages for fabric defect detection. First, it can be trained with only a small amount of defect-free samples. This is especially important for situations in which collecting large amounts of defective samples is difficult and impracticable. Second, owing to the multi-modal integration strategy, it is relatively more robust and accurate compared to general inspection methods (the results at each resolution level can be viewed as a modality). Third, according to our results, it can address multiple types of textile fabrics, from simple to more complex. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model is robust and yields good overall performance with high precision and acceptable recall rates.

The scale of the problem: recovering images of reionization with Generalized Morphological Component Analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chapman, Emma; Abdalla, Filipe B.; Bobin, J.; Starck, J.-L.; Harker, Geraint; Jelić, Vibor; Labropoulos, Panagiotis; Zaroubi, Saleem; Brentjens, Michiel A.; de Bruyn, A. G.; Koopmans, L. V. E.

2013-02-01

The accurate and precise removal of 21-cm foregrounds from Epoch of Reionization (EoR) redshifted 21-cm emission data is essential if we are to gain insight into an unexplored cosmological era. We apply a non-parametric technique, Generalized Morphological Component Analysis (gmca), to simulated Low Frequency Array (LOFAR)-EoR data and show that it has the ability to clean the foregrounds with high accuracy. We recover the 21-cm 1D, 2D and 3D power spectra with high accuracy across an impressive range of frequencies and scales. We show that gmca preserves the 21-cm phase information, especially when the smallest spatial scale data is discarded. While it has been shown that LOFAR-EoR image recovery is theoretically possible using image smoothing, we add that wavelet decomposition is an efficient way of recovering 21-cm signal maps to the same or greater order of accuracy with more flexibility. By comparing the gmca output residual maps (equal to the noise, 21-cm signal and any foreground fitting errors) with the 21-cm maps at one frequency and discarding the smaller wavelet scale information, we find a correlation coefficient of 0.689, compared to 0.588 for the equivalently smoothed image. Considering only the pixels in a central patch covering 50 per cent of the total map area, these coefficients improve to 0.905 and 0.605, respectively, and we conclude that wavelet decomposition is a significantly more powerful method to denoise reconstructed 21-cm maps than smoothing.

Signal and noise modeling in confocal laser scanning fluorescence microscopy.

PubMed

Herberich, Gerlind; Windoffer, Reinhard; Leube, Rudolf E; Aach, Til

2012-01-01

Fluorescence confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) has revolutionized imaging of subcellular structures in biomedical research by enabling the acquisition of 3D time-series of fluorescently-tagged proteins in living cells, hence forming the basis for an automated quantification of their morphological and dynamic characteristics. Due to the inherently weak fluorescence, CLSM images exhibit a low SNR. We present a novel model for the transfer of signal and noise in CLSM that is both theoretically sound as well as corroborated by a rigorous analysis of the pixel intensity statistics via measurement of the 3D noise power spectra, signal-dependence and distribution. Our model provides a better fit to the data than previously proposed models. Further, it forms the basis for (i) the simulation of the CLSM imaging process indispensable for the quantitative evaluation of CLSM image analysis algorithms, (ii) the application of Poisson denoising algorithms and (iii) the reconstruction of the fluorescence signal.

Improved photo response non-uniformity (PRNU) based source camera identification.

PubMed

Cooper, Alan J

2013-03-10

The concept of using Photo Response Non-Uniformity (PRNU) as a reliable forensic tool to match an image to a source camera is now well established. Traditionally, the PRNU estimation methodologies have centred on a wavelet based de-noising approach. Resultant filtering artefacts in combination with image and JPEG contamination act to reduce the quality of PRNU estimation. In this paper, it is argued that the application calls for a simplified filtering strategy which at its base level may be realised using a combination of adaptive and median filtering applied in the spatial domain. The proposed filtering method is interlinked with a further two stage enhancement strategy where only pixels in the image having high probabilities of significant PRNU bias are retained. This methodology significantly improves the discrimination between matching and non-matching image data sets over that of the common wavelet filtering approach. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Improved biliary detection and diagnosis through intelligent machine analysis.

PubMed

Logeswaran, Rajasvaran

2012-09-01

This paper reports on work undertaken to improve automated detection of bile ducts in magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography (MRCP) images, with the objective of conducting preliminary classification of the images for diagnosis. The proposed I-BDeDIMA (Improved Biliary Detection and Diagnosis through Intelligent Machine Analysis) scheme is a multi-stage framework consisting of successive phases of image normalization, denoising, structure identification, object labeling, feature selection and disease classification. A combination of multiresolution wavelet, dynamic intensity thresholding, segment-based region growing, region elimination, statistical analysis and neural networks, is used in this framework to achieve good structure detection and preliminary diagnosis. Tests conducted on over 200 clinical images with known diagnosis have shown promising results of over 90% accuracy. The scheme outperforms related work in the literature, making it a viable framework for computer-aided diagnosis of biliary diseases. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Collins, Liam; Belianinov, Alex; Proksch, Roger

We develop a full information capture approach for Magnetic Force Microscopy (MFM), referred to as generalized mode (G-Mode) MFM. G-Mode MFM acquires and stores the full data stream from the photodetector at sampling rates approaching the intrinsic photodiode limit. The data can be subsequently compressed, denoised, and analyzed, without information loss. Also, 3 G-Mode MFM is implemented and compared to traditional heterodyne based MFM on model systems including domain structures in ferromagnetic Yttrium Iron Garnet (YIG) and electronically and magnetically inhomogeneous high entropy alloy, CoFeMnNiSn. We investigate the use of information theory to mine the G-Mode MFM data and demonstratemore » its usefulness for extracting information which may be hidden in traditional MFM modes, including signatures of nonlinearities and mode coupling phenomena. Finally we demonstrate detection and separation of magnetic and electrostatic tip-sample interactions from a single G-Mode image, by analyzing the entire frequency response of the cantilever. G-Mode MFM is immediately implementable on any AFM platform and as such is expected to be a useful technique for probing spatiotemporal cantilever dynamics and mapping material properties as well as their mutual interactions.« less

Automatic seed picking for brachytherapy postimplant validation with 3D CT images.

PubMed

Zhang, Guobin; Sun, Qiyuan; Jiang, Shan; Yang, Zhiyong; Ma, Xiaodong; Jiang, Haisong

2017-11-01

Postimplant validation is an indispensable part in the brachytherapy technique. It provides the necessary feedback to ensure the quality of operation. The ability to pick implanted seed relates directly to the accuracy of validation. To address it, an automatic approach is proposed for picking implanted brachytherapy seeds in 3D CT images. In order to pick seed configuration (location and orientation) efficiently, the approach starts with the segmentation of seed from CT images using a thresholding filter which based on gray-level histogram. Through the process of filtering and denoising, the touching seed and single seed are classified. The true novelty of this approach is found in the application of the canny edge detection and improved concave points matching algorithm to separate touching seeds. Through the computation of image moments, the seed configuration can be determined efficiently. Finally, two different experiments are designed to verify the performance of the proposed approach: (1) physical phantom with 60 model seeds, and (2) patient data with 16 cases. Through assessment of validated results by a medical physicist, the proposed method exhibited promising results. Experiment on phantom demonstrates that the error of seed location and orientation is within ([Formula: see text]) mm and ([Formula: see text])[Formula: see text], respectively. In addition, the most seed location and orientation error is controlled within 0.8 mm and 3.5[Formula: see text] in all cases, respectively. The average process time of seed picking is 8.7 s per 100 seeds. In this paper, an automatic, efficient and robust approach, performed on CT images, is proposed to determine the implanted seed location as well as orientation in a 3D workspace. Through the experiments with phantom and patient data, this approach also successfully exhibits good performance.

Toward automated denoising of single molecular Förster resonance energy transfer data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lee, Hao-Chih; Lin, Bo-Lin; Chang, Wei-Hau; Tu, I.-Ping

2012-01-01

A wide-field two-channel fluorescence microscope is a powerful tool as it allows for the study of conformation dynamics of hundreds to thousands of immobilized single molecules by Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) signals. To date, the data reduction from a movie to a final set containing meaningful single-molecule FRET (smFRET) traces involves human inspection and intervention at several critical steps, greatly hampering the efficiency at the post-imaging stage. To facilitate the data reduction from smFRET movies to smFRET traces and to address the noise-limited issues, we developed a statistical denoising system toward fully automated processing. This data reduction system has embedded several novel approaches. First, as to background subtraction, high-order singular value decomposition (HOSVD) method is employed to extract spatial and temporal features. Second, to register and map the two color channels, the spots representing bleeding through the donor channel to the acceptor channel are used. Finally, correlation analysis and likelihood ratio statistic for the change point detection (CPD) are developed to study the two channels simultaneously, resolve FRET states, and report the dwelling time of each state. The performance of our method has been checked using both simulation and real data.

Developing a denoising filter for electron microscopy and tomography data in the cloud.

PubMed

Starosolski, Zbigniew; Szczepanski, Marek; Wahle, Manuel; Rusu, Mirabela; Wriggers, Willy

2012-09-01

The low radiation conditions and the predominantly phase-object image formation of cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) result in extremely high noise levels and low contrast in the recorded micrographs. The process of single particle or tomographic 3D reconstruction does not completely eliminate this noise and is even capable of introducing new sources of noise during alignment or when correcting for instrument parameters. The recently developed Digital Paths Supervised Variance (DPSV) denoising filter uses local variance information to control regional noise in a robust and adaptive manner. The performance of the DPSV filter was evaluated in this review qualitatively and quantitatively using simulated and experimental data from cryo-EM and tomography in two and three dimensions. We also assessed the benefit of filtering experimental reconstructions for visualization purposes and for enhancing the accuracy of feature detection. The DPSV filter eliminates high-frequency noise artifacts (density gaps), which would normally preclude the accurate segmentation of tomography reconstructions or the detection of alpha-helices in single-particle reconstructions. This collaborative software development project was carried out entirely by virtual interactions among the authors using publicly available development and file sharing tools.

Stacking denoising auto-encoders in a deep network to segment the brainstem on MRI in brain cancer patients: A clinical study.

PubMed

Dolz, Jose; Betrouni, Nacim; Quidet, Mathilde; Kharroubi, Dris; Leroy, Henri A; Reyns, Nicolas; Massoptier, Laurent; Vermandel, Maximilien

2016-09-01

Delineation of organs at risk (OARs) is a crucial step in surgical and treatment planning in brain cancer, where precise OARs volume delineation is required. However, this task is still often manually performed, which is time-consuming and prone to observer variability. To tackle these issues a deep learning approach based on stacking denoising auto-encoders has been proposed to segment the brainstem on magnetic resonance images in brain cancer context. Additionally to classical features used in machine learning to segment brain structures, two new features are suggested. Four experts participated in this study by segmenting the brainstem on 9 patients who underwent radiosurgery. Analysis of variance on shape and volume similarity metrics indicated that there were significant differences (p<0.05) between the groups of manual annotations and automatic segmentations. Experimental evaluation also showed an overlapping higher than 90% with respect to the ground truth. These results are comparable, and often higher, to those of the state of the art segmentation methods but with a considerably reduction of the segmentation time. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Hilbert-Huang Transform-Based Denoising Method for the TEM Response of a PRBS Source Signal

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hai, Li; Guo-qiang, Xue; Pan, Zhao; Hua-sen, Zhong; Khan, Muhammad Younis

2016-08-01

The denoising process is critical in processing transient electromagnetic (TEM) sounding data. For the full waveform pseudo-random binary sequences (PRBS) response, an inadequate noise estimation may result in an erroneous interpretation. We consider the Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT) and its application to suppress the noise in the PRBS response. The focus is on the thresholding scheme to suppress the noise and the analysis of the signal based on its Hilbert time-frequency representation. The method first decomposes the signal into the intrinsic mode function, and then, inspired by the thresholding scheme in wavelet analysis; an adaptive and interval thresholding is conducted to set to zero all the components in intrinsic mode function which are lower than a threshold related to the noise level. The algorithm is based on the characteristic of the PRBS response. The HHT-based denoising scheme is tested on the synthetic and field data with the different noise levels. The result shows that the proposed method has a good capability in denoising and detail preservation.

Multitaper Spectral Analysis and Wavelet Denoising Applied to Helioseismic Data

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Komm, R. W.; Gu, Y.; Hill, F.; Stark, P. B.; Fodor, I. K.

1999-01-01

Estimates of solar normal mode frequencies from helioseismic observations can be improved by using Multitaper Spectral Analysis (MTSA) to estimate spectra from the time series, then using wavelet denoising of the log spectra. MTSA leads to a power spectrum estimate with reduced variance and better leakage properties than the conventional periodogram. Under the assumption of stationarity and mild regularity conditions, the log multitaper spectrum has a statistical distribution that is approximately Gaussian, so wavelet denoising is asymptotically an optimal method to reduce the noise in the estimated spectra. We find that a single m-upsilon spectrum benefits greatly from MTSA followed by wavelet denoising, and that wavelet denoising by itself can be used to improve m-averaged spectra. We compare estimates using two different 5-taper estimates (Stepian and sine tapers) and the periodogram estimate, for GONG time series at selected angular degrees l. We compare those three spectra with and without wavelet-denoising, both visually, and in terms of the mode parameters estimated from the pre-processed spectra using the GONG peak-fitting algorithm. The two multitaper estimates give equivalent results. The number of modes fitted well by the GONG algorithm is 20% to 60% larger (depending on l and the temporal frequency) when applied to the multitaper estimates than when applied to the periodogram. The estimated mode parameters (frequency, amplitude and width) are comparable for the three power spectrum estimates, except for modes with very small mode widths (a few frequency bins), where the multitaper spectra broadened the modest compared with the periodogram. We tested the influence of the number of tapers used and found that narrow modes at low n values are broadened to the extent that they can no longer be fit if the number of tapers is too large. For helioseismic time series of this length and temporal resolution, the optimal number of tapers is less than 10.

lop-DWI: A Novel Scheme for Pre-Processing of Diffusion-Weighted Images in the Gradient Direction Domain.

PubMed

Sepehrband, Farshid; Choupan, Jeiran; Caruyer, Emmanuel; Kurniawan, Nyoman D; Gal, Yaniv; Tieng, Quang M; McMahon, Katie L; Vegh, Viktor; Reutens, David C; Yang, Zhengyi

2014-01-01

We describe and evaluate a pre-processing method based on a periodic spiral sampling of diffusion-gradient directions for high angular resolution diffusion magnetic resonance imaging. Our pre-processing method incorporates prior knowledge about the acquired diffusion-weighted signal, facilitating noise reduction. Periodic spiral sampling of gradient direction encodings results in an acquired signal in each voxel that is pseudo-periodic with characteristics that allow separation of low-frequency signal from high frequency noise. Consequently, it enhances local reconstruction of the orientation distribution function used to define fiber tracks in the brain. Denoising with periodic spiral sampling was tested using synthetic data and in vivo human brain images. The level of improvement in signal-to-noise ratio and in the accuracy of local reconstruction of fiber tracks was significantly improved using our method.

A simple filter circuit for denoising biomechanical impact signals.

PubMed

Subramaniam, Suba R; Georgakis, Apostolos

2009-01-01

We present a simple scheme for denoising non-stationary biomechanical signals with the aim of accurately estimating their second derivative (acceleration). The method is based on filtering in fractional Fourier domains using well-known low-pass filters in a way that amounts to a time-varying cut-off threshold. The resulting algorithm is linear and its design is facilitated by the relationship between the fractional Fourier transform and joint time-frequency representations. The implemented filter circuit employs only three low-order filters while its efficiency is further supported by the low computational complexity of the fractional Fourier transform. The results demonstrate that the proposed method can denoise the signals effectively and is more robust against noise as compared to conventional low-pass filters.

Nonlocal variational model and filter algorithm to remove multiplicative noise

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chen, Dai-Qiang; Zhang, Hui; Cheng, Li-Zhi

2010-07-01

The nonlocal (NL) means filter proposed by Buades, Coll, and Morel (SIAM Multiscale Model. Simul. 4(2), 490-530, 2005), which makes full use of the redundancy information in images, has shown to be very efficient for image denoising with Gauss noise added. On the basis of the NL method and a striver to minimize the conditional mean-square error, we design a NL means filter to remove multiplicative noise, and combining the NL filter to regularity method, we propose a NL total variational (TV) model and present a fast iterated algorithm for it. Experiments demonstrate that our algorithm is better than TV method; it is superior in preserving small structures and textures and can obtain an improvement in peak signal-to-noise ratio.

Delineation of karst terranes in complex environments: Application of modern developments in the wavelet theory and data mining

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Alperovich, Leonid; Averbuch, Amir; Eppelbaum, Lev; Zheludev, Valery

2013-04-01

Karst areas occupy about 14% of the world land. Karst terranes of different origin have caused difficult conditions for building, industrial activity and tourism, and are the source of heightened danger for environment. Mapping of karst (sinkhole) hazards, obviously, will be one of the most significant problems of engineering geophysics in the XXI century. Taking into account the complexity of geological media, some unfavourable environments and known ambiguity of geophysical data analysis, a single geophysical method examination might be insufficient. Wavelet methodology as whole has a significant impact on cardinal problems of geophysical signal processing such as: denoising of signals, enhancement of signals and distinguishing of signals with closely related characteristics and integrated analysis of different geophysical fields (satellite, airborne, earth surface or underground observed data). We developed a three-phase approach to the integrated geophysical localization of subsurface karsts (the same approach could be used for following monitoring of karst dynamics). The first phase consists of modeling devoted to compute various geophysical effects characterizing karst phenomena. The second phase determines development of the signal processing approaches to analyzing of profile or areal geophysical observations. Finally, at the third phase provides integration of these methods in order to create a new method of the combined interpretation of different geophysical data. In the base of our combine geophysical analysis we put modern developments in the wavelet technique of the signal and image processing. The development of the integrated methodology of geophysical field examination will enable to recognizing the karst terranes even by a small ratio of "useful signal - noise" in complex geological environments. For analyzing the geophysical data, we used a technique based on the algorithm to characterize a geophysical image by a limited number of parameters. This set of parameters serves as a signature of the image and is to be utilized for discrimination of images containing karst cavity (K) from the images non-containing karst (N). The constructed algorithm consists of the following main phases: (a) collection of the database, (b) characterization of geophysical images, (c) and dimensionality reduction. Then, each image is characterized by the histogram of the coherency directions. As a result of the previous steps we obtain two sets K and N of the signatures vectors for images from sections containing karst cavity and non-karst subsurface, respectively.

Sparsity-aware tight frame learning with adaptive subspace recognition for multiple fault diagnosis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhang, Han; Chen, Xuefeng; Du, Zhaohui; Yang, Boyuan

2017-09-01

It is a challenging problem to design excellent dictionaries to sparsely represent diverse fault information and simultaneously discriminate different fault sources. Therefore, this paper describes and analyzes a novel multiple feature recognition framework which incorporates the tight frame learning technique with an adaptive subspace recognition strategy. The proposed framework consists of four stages. Firstly, by introducing the tight frame constraint into the popular dictionary learning model, the proposed tight frame learning model could be formulated as a nonconvex optimization problem which can be solved by alternatively implementing hard thresholding operation and singular value decomposition. Secondly, the noises are effectively eliminated through transform sparse coding techniques. Thirdly, the denoised signal is decoupled into discriminative feature subspaces by each tight frame filter. Finally, in guidance of elaborately designed fault related sensitive indexes, latent fault feature subspaces can be adaptively recognized and multiple faults are diagnosed simultaneously. Extensive numerical experiments are sequently implemented to investigate the sparsifying capability of the learned tight frame as well as its comprehensive denoising performance. Most importantly, the feasibility and superiority of the proposed framework is verified through performing multiple fault diagnosis of motor bearings. Compared with the state-of-the-art fault detection techniques, some important advantages have been observed: firstly, the proposed framework incorporates the physical prior with the data-driven strategy and naturally multiple fault feature with similar oscillation morphology can be adaptively decoupled. Secondly, the tight frame dictionary directly learned from the noisy observation can significantly promote the sparsity of fault features compared to analytical tight frames. Thirdly, a satisfactory complete signal space description property is guaranteed and thus weak feature leakage problem is avoided compared to typical learning methods.

A prospective case study of high boost, high frequency emphasis and two-way diffusion filters on MR images of glioblastoma multiforme.

PubMed

Anoop, B N; Joseph, Justin; Williams, J; Jayaraman, J Sivaraman; Sebastian, Ansa Maria; Sihota, Praveer

2018-06-01

Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) appears undifferentiated and non-enhancing on magnetic resonance (MR) imagery. As MRI does not offer adequate image quality to allow visual discrimination of the boundary between GBM focus and perifocal vasogenic edema, surgical and radiotherapy planning become difficult. The presence of noise in MR images influences the computation of radiation dosage and precludes the edge based segmentation schemes in automated software for radiation treatment planning. The performance of techniques meant for simultaneous denoising and sharpening, like high boost filters, high frequency emphasize filters and two-way anisotropic diffusion is sensitive to the selection of their operational parameters. Improper selection may cause overshoot and saturation artefacts or noisy grey level transitions can be left unsuppressed. This paper is a prospective case study of the performance of high boost filters, high frequency emphasize filters and two-way anisotropic diffusion on MR images of GBM, for their ability to suppress noise from homogeneous regions and to selectively sharpen the true morphological edges. An objective method for determining the optimum value of the operational parameters of these techniques is also demonstrated. Saturation Evaluation Index (SEI), Perceptual Sharpness Index (PSI), Edge Model based Blur Metric (EMBM), Sharpness of Ridges (SOR), Structural Similarity Index Metric (SSIM), Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Noise Suppression Ratio (NSR) are the objective functions used. They account for overshoot and saturation artefacts, sharpness of the image, width of salient edges (haloes), susceptibility of edge quality to noise, feature preservation and degree of noise suppression. Two-way diffusion is found to be superior to others in all these respects. The SEI, PSI, EMBM, SOR, SSIM, PSNR and NSR exhibited by two-way diffusion are 0.0016 ± 0.0012, 0.2049 ± 0.0187, 0.0905 ± 0.0408, 2.64 × 10 12  ± 1.6 × 10 12 , 0.9955 ± 0.0024, 38.214 ± 5.2145 and 0.3547 ± 0.0069, respectively.

Robust digital image inpainting algorithm in the wireless environment

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Karapetyan, G.; Sarukhanyan, H. G.; Agaian, S. S.

2014-05-01

Image or video inpainting is the process/art of retrieving missing portions of an image without introducing undesirable artifacts that are undetectable by an ordinary observer. An image/video can be damaged due to a variety of factors, such as deterioration due to scratches, laser dazzling effects, wear and tear, dust spots, loss of data when transmitted through a channel, etc. Applications of inpainting include image restoration (removing laser dazzling effects, dust spots, date, text, time, etc.), image synthesis (texture synthesis), completing panoramas, image coding, wireless transmission (recovery of the missing blocks), digital culture protection, image de-noising, fingerprint recognition, and film special effects and production. Most inpainting methods can be classified in two key groups: global and local methods. Global methods are used for generating large image regions from samples while local methods are used for filling in small image gaps. Each method has its own advantages and limitations. For example, the global inpainting methods perform well on textured image retrieval, whereas the classical local methods perform poorly. In addition, some of the techniques are computationally intensive; exceeding the capabilities of most currently used mobile devices. In general, the inpainting algorithms are not suitable for the wireless environment. This paper presents a new and efficient scheme that combines the advantages of both local and global methods into a single algorithm. Particularly, it introduces a blind inpainting model to solve the above problems by adaptively selecting support area for the inpainting scheme. The proposed method is applied to various challenging image restoration tasks, including recovering old photos, recovering missing data on real and synthetic images, and recovering the specular reflections in endoscopic images. A number of computer simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of our scheme and also illustrate the main properties and implementation steps of the presented algorithm. Furthermore, the simulation results show that the presented method is among the state-of-the-art and compares favorably against many available methods in the wireless environment. Robustness in the wireless environment with respect to the shape of the manually selected "marked" region is also illustrated. Currently, we are working on the expansion of this work to video and 3-D data.

A motion deblurring method with long/short exposure image pairs

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Cui, Guangmang; Hua, Weiping; Zhao, Jufeng; Gong, Xiaoli; Zhu, Liyao

2018-01-01

In this paper, a motion deblurring method with long/short exposure image pairs is presented. The long/short exposure image pairs are captured for the same scene under different exposure time. The image pairs are treated as the input of the deblurring method and more information could be used to obtain a deblurring result with high image quality. Firstly, the luminance equalization process is carried out to the short exposure image. And the blur kernel is estimated with the image pair under the maximum a posteriori (MAP) framework using conjugate gradient algorithm. Then a L0 image smoothing based denoising method is applied to the luminance equalized image. And the final deblurring result is obtained with the gain controlled residual image deconvolution process with the edge map as the gain map. Furthermore, a real experimental optical system is built to capture the image pair in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed deblurring framework. The long/short image pairs are obtained under different exposure time and camera gain control. Experimental results show that the proposed method could provide a superior deblurring result in both subjective and objective assessment compared with other deblurring approaches.

3-D discrete shearlet transform and video processing.

PubMed

Negi, Pooran Singh; Labate, Demetrio

2012-06-01

In this paper, we introduce a digital implementation of the 3-D shearlet transform and illustrate its application to problems of video denoising and enhancement. The shearlet representation is a multiscale pyramid of well-localized waveforms defined at various locations and orientations, which was introduced to overcome the limitations of traditional multiscale systems in dealing with multidimensional data. While the shearlet approach shares the general philosophy of curvelets and surfacelets, it is based on a very different mathematical framework, which is derived from the theory of affine systems and uses shearing matrices rather than rotations. This allows a natural transition from the continuous setting to the digital setting and a more flexible mathematical structure. The 3-D digital shearlet transform algorithm presented in this paper consists in a cascade of a multiscale decomposition and a directional filtering stage. The filters employed in this decomposition are implemented as finite-length filters, and this ensures that the transform is local and numerically efficient. To illustrate its performance, the 3-D discrete shearlet transform is applied to problems of video denoising and enhancement, and compared against other state-of-the-art multiscale techniques, including curvelets and surfacelets.

A de-noising algorithm based on wavelet threshold-exponential adaptive window width-fitting for ground electrical source airborne transient electromagnetic signal

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ji, Yanju; Li, Dongsheng; Yu, Mingmei; Wang, Yuan; Wu, Qiong; Lin, Jun

2016-05-01

The ground electrical source airborne transient electromagnetic system (GREATEM) on an unmanned aircraft enjoys considerable prospecting depth, lateral resolution and detection efficiency, etc. In recent years it has become an important technical means of rapid resources exploration. However, GREATEM data are extremely vulnerable to stationary white noise and non-stationary electromagnetic noise (sferics noise, aircraft engine noise and other human electromagnetic noises). These noises will cause degradation of the imaging quality for data interpretation. Based on the characteristics of the GREATEM data and major noises, we propose a de-noising algorithm utilizing wavelet threshold method and exponential adaptive window width-fitting. Firstly, the white noise is filtered in the measured data using the wavelet threshold method. Then, the data are segmented using data window whose step length is even logarithmic intervals. The data polluted by electromagnetic noise are identified within each window based on the discriminating principle of energy detection, and the attenuation characteristics of the data slope are extracted. Eventually, an exponential fitting algorithm is adopted to fit the attenuation curve of each window, and the data polluted by non-stationary electromagnetic noise are replaced with their fitting results. Thus the non-stationary electromagnetic noise can be effectively removed. The proposed algorithm is verified by the synthetic and real GREATEM signals. The results show that in GREATEM signal, stationary white noise and non-stationary electromagnetic noise can be effectively filtered using the wavelet threshold-exponential adaptive window width-fitting algorithm, which enhances the imaging quality.

Combination of oriented partial differential equation and shearlet transform for denoising in electronic speckle pattern interferometry fringe patterns.

PubMed

Xu, Wenjun; Tang, Chen; Gu, Fan; Cheng, Jiajia

2017-04-01

It is a key step to remove the massive speckle noise in electronic speckle pattern interferometry (ESPI) fringe patterns. In the spatial-domain filtering methods, oriented partial differential equations have been demonstrated to be a powerful tool. In the transform-domain filtering methods, the shearlet transform is a state-of-the-art method. In this paper, we propose a filtering method for ESPI fringe patterns denoising, which is a combination of second-order oriented partial differential equation (SOOPDE) and the shearlet transform, named SOOPDE-Shearlet. Here, the shearlet transform is introduced into the ESPI fringe patterns denoising for the first time. This combination takes advantage of the fact that the spatial-domain filtering method SOOPDE and the transform-domain filtering method shearlet transform benefit from each other. We test the proposed SOOPDE-Shearlet on five experimentally obtained ESPI fringe patterns with poor quality and compare our method with SOOPDE, shearlet transform, windowed Fourier filtering (WFF), and coherence-enhancing diffusion (CEDPDE). Among them, WFF and CEDPDE are the state-of-the-art methods for ESPI fringe patterns denoising in transform domain and spatial domain, respectively. The experimental results have demonstrated the good performance of the proposed SOOPDE-Shearlet.

A hybrid fault diagnosis method based on second generation wavelet de-noising and local mean decomposition for rotating machinery.

PubMed

Liu, Zhiwen; He, Zhengjia; Guo, Wei; Tang, Zhangchun

2016-03-01

In order to extract fault features of large-scale power equipment from strong background noise, a hybrid fault diagnosis method based on the second generation wavelet de-noising (SGWD) and the local mean decomposition (LMD) is proposed in this paper. In this method, a de-noising algorithm of second generation wavelet transform (SGWT) using neighboring coefficients was employed as the pretreatment to remove noise in rotating machinery vibration signals by virtue of its good effect in enhancing the signal-noise ratio (SNR). Then, the LMD method is used to decompose the de-noised signals into several product functions (PFs). The PF corresponding to the faulty feature signal is selected according to the correlation coefficients criterion. Finally, the frequency spectrum is analyzed by applying the FFT to the selected PF. The proposed method is applied to analyze the vibration signals collected from an experimental gearbox and a real locomotive rolling bearing. The results demonstrate that the proposed method has better performances such as high SNR and fast convergence speed than the normal LMD method. Crown Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Joint seismic data denoising and interpolation with double-sparsity dictionary learning

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zhu, Lingchen; Liu, Entao; McClellan, James H.

2017-08-01

Seismic data quality is vital to geophysical applications, so that methods of data recovery, including denoising and interpolation, are common initial steps in the seismic data processing flow. We present a method to perform simultaneous interpolation and denoising, which is based on double-sparsity dictionary learning. This extends previous work that was for denoising only. The original double-sparsity dictionary learning algorithm is modified to track the traces with missing data by defining a masking operator that is integrated into the sparse representation of the dictionary. A weighted low-rank approximation algorithm is adopted to handle the dictionary updating as a sparse recovery optimization problem constrained by the masking operator. Compared to traditional sparse transforms with fixed dictionaries that lack the ability to adapt to complex data structures, the double-sparsity dictionary learning method learns the signal adaptively from selected patches of the corrupted seismic data, while preserving compact forward and inverse transform operators. Numerical experiments on synthetic seismic data indicate that this new method preserves more subtle features in the data set without introducing pseudo-Gibbs artifacts when compared to other directional multi-scale transform methods such as curvelets.

Video denoising using low rank tensor decomposition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gui, Lihua; Cui, Gaochao; Zhao, Qibin; Wang, Dongsheng; Cichocki, Andrzej; Cao, Jianting

2017-03-01

Reducing noise in a video sequence is of vital important in many real-world applications. One popular method is block matching collaborative filtering. However, the main drawback of this method is that noise standard deviation for the whole video sequence is known in advance. In this paper, we present a tensor based denoising framework that considers 3D patches instead of 2D patches. By collecting the similar 3D patches non-locally, we employ the low-rank tensor decomposition for collaborative filtering. Since we specify the non-informative prior over the noise precision parameter, the noise variance can be inferred automatically from observed video data. Therefore, our method is more practical, which does not require knowing the noise variance. The experimental on video denoising demonstrates the effectiveness of our proposed method.

Simultaneous multi-component seismic denoising and reconstruction via K-SVD

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hou, Sian; Zhang, Feng; Li, Xiangyang; Zhao, Qiang; Dai, Hengchang

2018-06-01

Data denoising and reconstruction play an increasingly significant role in seismic prospecting for their value in enhancing effective signals, dealing with surface obstacles and reducing acquisition costs. In this paper, we propose a novel method to denoise and reconstruct multicomponent seismic data simultaneously. This method lies within the framework of machine learning and the key points are defining a suitable weight function and a modified inner product operator. The purpose of these two processes are to perform missing data machine learning when the random noise deviation is unknown, and building a mathematical relationship for each component to incorporate all the information of multi-component data. Two examples, using synthetic and real multicomponent data, demonstrate that the new method is a feasible alternative for multi-component seismic data processing.

Color correction with blind image restoration based on multiple images using a low-rank model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Dong; Xie, Xudong; Lam, Kin-Man

2014-03-01

We present a method that can handle the color correction of multiple photographs with blind image restoration simultaneously and automatically. We prove that the local colors of a set of images of the same scene exhibit the low-rank property locally both before and after a color-correction operation. This property allows us to correct all kinds of errors in an image under a low-rank matrix model without particular priors or assumptions. The possible errors may be caused by changes of viewpoint, large illumination variations, gross pixel corruptions, partial occlusions, etc. Furthermore, a new iterative soft-segmentation method is proposed for local color transfer using color influence maps. Due to the fact that the correct color information and the spatial information of images can be recovered using the low-rank model, more precise color correction and many other image-restoration tasks-including image denoising, image deblurring, and gray-scale image colorizing-can be performed simultaneously. Experiments have verified that our method can achieve consistent and promising results on uncontrolled real photographs acquired from the Internet and that it outperforms current state-of-the-art methods.

Super-resolution for everybody: An image processing workflow to obtain high-resolution images with a standard confocal microscope.

PubMed

Lam, France; Cladière, Damien; Guillaume, Cyndélia; Wassmann, Katja; Bolte, Susanne

2017-02-15

In the presented work we aimed at improving confocal imaging to obtain highest possible resolution in thick biological samples, such as the mouse oocyte. We therefore developed an image processing workflow that allows improving the lateral and axial resolution of a standard confocal microscope. Our workflow comprises refractive index matching, the optimization of microscope hardware parameters and image restoration by deconvolution. We compare two different deconvolution algorithms, evaluate the necessity of denoising and establish the optimal image restoration procedure. We validate our workflow by imaging sub resolution fluorescent beads and measuring the maximum lateral and axial resolution of the confocal system. Subsequently, we apply the parameters to the imaging and data restoration of fluorescently labelled meiotic spindles of mouse oocytes. We measure a resolution increase of approximately 2-fold in the lateral and 3-fold in the axial direction throughout a depth of 60μm. This demonstrates that with our optimized workflow we reach a resolution that is comparable to 3D-SIM-imaging, but with better depth penetration for confocal images of beads and the biological sample. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Adaptive and robust statistical methods for processing near-field scanning microwave microscopy images.

PubMed

Coakley, K J; Imtiaz, A; Wallis, T M; Weber, J C; Berweger, S; Kabos, P

2015-03-01

Near-field scanning microwave microscopy offers great potential to facilitate characterization, development and modeling of materials. By acquiring microwave images at multiple frequencies and amplitudes (along with the other modalities) one can study material and device physics at different lateral and depth scales. Images are typically noisy and contaminated by artifacts that can vary from scan line to scan line and planar-like trends due to sample tilt errors. Here, we level images based on an estimate of a smooth 2-d trend determined with a robust implementation of a local regression method. In this robust approach, features and outliers which are not due to the trend are automatically downweighted. We denoise images with the Adaptive Weights Smoothing method. This method smooths out additive noise while preserving edge-like features in images. We demonstrate the feasibility of our methods on topography images and microwave |S11| images. For one challenging test case, we demonstrate that our method outperforms alternative methods from the scanning probe microscopy data analysis software package Gwyddion. Our methods should be useful for massive image data sets where manual selection of landmarks or image subsets by a user is impractical. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Distributed Contour Trees

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Morozov, Dmitriy; Weber, Gunther H.

2014-03-31

Topological techniques provide robust tools for data analysis. They are used, for example, for feature extraction, for data de-noising, and for comparison of data sets. This chapter concerns contour trees, a topological descriptor that records the connectivity of the isosurfaces of scalar functions. These trees are fundamental to analysis and visualization of physical phenomena modeled by real-valued measurements. We study the parallel analysis of contour trees. After describing a particular representation of a contour tree, called local{global representation, we illustrate how di erent problems that rely on contour trees can be solved in parallel with minimal communication.

Entropy-aware projected Landweber reconstruction for quantized block compressive sensing of aerial imagery

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Liu, Hao; Li, Kangda; Wang, Bing; Tang, Hainie; Gong, Xiaohui

2017-01-01

A quantized block compressive sensing (QBCS) framework, which incorporates the universal measurement, quantization/inverse quantization, entropy coder/decoder, and iterative projected Landweber reconstruction, is summarized. Under the QBCS framework, this paper presents an improved reconstruction algorithm for aerial imagery, QBCS, with entropy-aware projected Landweber (QBCS-EPL), which leverages the full-image sparse transform without Wiener filter and an entropy-aware thresholding model for wavelet-domain image denoising. Through analyzing the functional relation between the soft-thresholding factors and entropy-based bitrates for different quantization methods, the proposed model can effectively remove wavelet-domain noise of bivariate shrinkage and achieve better image reconstruction quality. For the overall performance of QBCS reconstruction, experimental results demonstrate that the proposed QBCS-EPL algorithm significantly outperforms several existing algorithms. With the experiment-driven methodology, the QBCS-EPL algorithm can obtain better reconstruction quality at a relatively moderate computational cost, which makes it more desirable for aerial imagery applications.

Adaptive target binarization method based on a dual-camera system

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lei, Jing; Zhang, Ping; Xu, Jiangtao; Gao, Zhiyuan; Gao, Jing

2018-01-01

An adaptive target binarization method based on a dual-camera system that contains two dynamic vision sensors was proposed. First, a preprocessing procedure of denoising is introduced to remove the noise events generated by the sensors. Then, the complete edge of the target is retrieved and represented by events based on an event mosaicking method. Third, the region of the target is confirmed by an event-to-event method. Finally, a postprocessing procedure of image open and close operations of morphology methods is adopted to remove the artifacts caused by event-to-event mismatching. The proposed binarization method has been extensively tested on numerous degraded images with nonuniform illumination, low contrast, noise, or light spots and successfully compared with other well-known binarization methods. The experimental results, which are based on visual and misclassification error criteria, show that the proposed method performs well and has better robustness on the binarization of degraded images.

Fault Diagnosis of Rolling Bearing Based on Fast Nonlocal Means and Envelop Spectrum

PubMed Central

Lv, Yong; Zhu, Qinglin; Yuan, Rui

2015-01-01

The nonlocal means (NL-Means) method that has been widely used in the field of image processing in recent years effectively overcomes the limitations of the neighborhood filter and eliminates the artifact and edge problems caused by the traditional image denoising methods. Although NL-Means is very popular in the field of 2D image signal processing, it has not received enough attention in the field of 1D signal processing. This paper proposes a novel approach that diagnoses the fault of a rolling bearing based on fast NL-Means and the envelop spectrum. The parameters of the rolling bearing signals are optimized in the proposed method, which is the key contribution of this paper. This approach is applied to the fault diagnosis of rolling bearing, and the results have shown the efficiency at detecting roller bearing failures. PMID:25585105

Iterative feature refinement for accurate undersampled MR image reconstruction

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wang, Shanshan; Liu, Jianbo; Liu, Qiegen; Ying, Leslie; Liu, Xin; Zheng, Hairong; Liang, Dong

2016-05-01

Accelerating MR scan is of great significance for clinical, research and advanced applications, and one main effort to achieve this is the utilization of compressed sensing (CS) theory. Nevertheless, the existing CSMRI approaches still have limitations such as fine structure loss or high computational complexity. This paper proposes a novel iterative feature refinement (IFR) module for accurate MR image reconstruction from undersampled K-space data. Integrating IFR with CSMRI which is equipped with fixed transforms, we develop an IFR-CS method to restore meaningful structures and details that are originally discarded without introducing too much additional complexity. Specifically, the proposed IFR-CS is realized with three iterative steps, namely sparsity-promoting denoising, feature refinement and Tikhonov regularization. Experimental results on both simulated and in vivo MR datasets have shown that the proposed module has a strong capability to capture image details, and that IFR-CS is comparable and even superior to other state-of-the-art reconstruction approaches.

Membrane Potential and Calcium Dynamics in Beta Cells from Mouse Pancreas Tissue Slices: Theory, Experimentation, and Analysis.

PubMed

Dolenšek, Jurij; Špelič, Denis; Klemen, Maša Skelin; Žalik, Borut; Gosak, Marko; Rupnik, Marjan Slak; Stožer, Andraž

2015-10-28

Beta cells in the pancreatic islets of Langerhans are precise biological sensors for glucose and play a central role in balancing the organism between catabolic and anabolic needs. A hallmark of the beta cell response to glucose are oscillatory changes of membrane potential that are tightly coupled with oscillatory changes in intracellular calcium concentration which, in turn, elicit oscillations of insulin secretion. Both membrane potential and calcium changes spread from one beta cell to the other in a wave-like manner. In order to assess the properties of the abovementioned responses to physiological and pathological stimuli, the main challenge remains how to effectively measure membrane potential and calcium changes at the same time with high spatial and temporal resolution, and also in as many cells as possible. To date, the most wide-spread approach has employed the electrophysiological patch-clamp method to monitor membrane potential changes. Inherently, this technique has many advantages, such as a direct contact with the cell and a high temporal resolution. However, it allows one to assess information from a single cell only. In some instances, this technique has been used in conjunction with CCD camera-based imaging, offering the opportunity to simultaneously monitor membrane potential and calcium changes, but not in the same cells and not with a reliable cellular or subcellular spatial resolution. Recently, a novel family of highly-sensitive membrane potential reporter dyes in combination with high temporal and spatial confocal calcium imaging allows for simultaneously detecting membrane potential and calcium changes in many cells at a time. Since the signals yielded from both types of reporter dyes are inherently noisy, we have developed complex methods of data denoising that permit for visualization and pixel-wise analysis of signals. Combining the experimental approach of high-resolution imaging with the advanced analysis of noisy data enables novel physiological insights and reassessment of current concepts in unprecedented detail.

A novel biomedical image indexing and retrieval system via deep preference learning.

PubMed

Pang, Shuchao; Orgun, Mehmet A; Yu, Zhezhou

2018-05-01

The traditional biomedical image retrieval methods as well as content-based image retrieval (CBIR) methods originally designed for non-biomedical images either only consider using pixel and low-level features to describe an image or use deep features to describe images but still leave a lot of room for improving both accuracy and efficiency. In this work, we propose a new approach, which exploits deep learning technology to extract the high-level and compact features from biomedical images. The deep feature extraction process leverages multiple hidden layers to capture substantial feature structures of high-resolution images and represent them at different levels of abstraction, leading to an improved performance for indexing and retrieval of biomedical images. We exploit the current popular and multi-layered deep neural networks, namely, stacked denoising autoencoders (SDAE) and convolutional neural networks (CNN) to represent the discriminative features of biomedical images by transferring the feature representations and parameters of pre-trained deep neural networks from another domain. Moreover, in order to index all the images for finding the similarly referenced images, we also introduce preference learning technology to train and learn a kind of a preference model for the query image, which can output the similarity ranking list of images from a biomedical image database. To the best of our knowledge, this paper introduces preference learning technology for the first time into biomedical image retrieval. We evaluate the performance of two powerful algorithms based on our proposed system and compare them with those of popular biomedical image indexing approaches and existing regular image retrieval methods with detailed experiments over several well-known public biomedical image databases. Based on different criteria for the evaluation of retrieval performance, experimental results demonstrate that our proposed algorithms outperform the state-of-the-art techniques in indexing biomedical images. We propose a novel and automated indexing system based on deep preference learning to characterize biomedical images for developing computer aided diagnosis (CAD) systems in healthcare. Our proposed system shows an outstanding indexing ability and high efficiency for biomedical image retrieval applications and it can be used to collect and annotate the high-resolution images in a biomedical database for further biomedical image research and applications. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Wavelet-Based Adaptive Denoising of Phonocardiographic Records

DTIC Science & Technology

2001-10-25

phonocardiography, including the recording of fetal heart sounds on the maternal abdominal surface. Keywords - phonocardiography, wavelets, denoising, signal... fetal heart rate monitoring [2], [7], [8]. Unfortunately, heart sound records are very often disturbed by various factors, which can prohibit their...recorded the acoustic signals. The first microphone was inserted into the focus of a stethoscope and it recorded the acoustic signals of the heart ( heart

MSSA de-noising of horizon time structure to improve the curvature attribute analysis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tiwari, R. K.; Rekapalli, R.; Vedanti, N.

2017-12-01

Although the seismic attributes are useful for identifying sub-surface structural features like faults, fractures, lineaments and sharp stratigraphy etc., the different kinds of noises arising from unknown physical sources during the data acquisition and processing creates acute problems in physical interpretation of complex crustal structures. Hence, we propose to study effect of noise on curvature attribute analysis of seismic time structure data. We propose here Multichannel Singular Spectrum Analysis (MSSA) de-noising algorithm as a pre filtering scheme to reduce effect of noise. To demonstrate the procedure, first, we compute the most positive and negative curvature on a synthetic time structure with surface features resembling anticlines, synclines and faults and then adding the known percentage of noise. We noticed that the curvatures estimated from the noisy data reveal considerable deviations from the curvature of pure synthetic data. This suggests that there is a strong impact of noise on the curvature estimates. Further, we have employed 2D median filter and MSSA methods to filter the noisy time structure and then computed the curvatures. The comparisons of curvatures estimated from de-noised data suggest that the results obtained from MSSA de-noised data match well with the curvatures of pure synthetic data. Finally, we present an example of real data analysis from Utsira Top (UT) horizon of Southern Viking Graben, Norway to identify the time-lapse changes in UT horizon after CO2 injection. We applied the MSSA de-noising algorithm on UT horizon time structure and amplitude data of pre and post CO2 injection. Our analyses suggest modest but clearly visible, structural changes in the UT horizon after CO2 injection at a few locations, which seem to be associated with the locations of change in seismic amplitudes. Thus, the results from both the synthetic and real field data suggest that the MSSA based de-noising algorithm is robust for filtering the horizon time structures for accurate curvature attributes analysis and better interpretation of structural changes in geological features. Key Words: Curvature attributes, MSSA, Seismic Horizon, 2D-median filter, Utsira Horizon.

Convolutional Sparse Coding for RGB+NIR Imaging.

PubMed

Hu, Xuemei; Heide, Felix; Dai, Qionghai; Wetzstein, Gordon

2018-04-01

Emerging sensor designs increasingly rely on novel color filter arrays (CFAs) to sample the incident spectrum in unconventional ways. In particular, capturing a near-infrared (NIR) channel along with conventional RGB color is an exciting new imaging modality. RGB+NIR sensing has broad applications in computational photography, such as low-light denoising, it has applications in computer vision, such as facial recognition and tracking, and it paves the way toward low-cost single-sensor RGB and depth imaging using structured illumination. However, cost-effective commercial CFAs suffer from severe spectral cross talk. This cross talk represents a major challenge in high-quality RGB+NIR imaging, rendering existing spatially multiplexed sensor designs impractical. In this work, we introduce a new approach to RGB+NIR image reconstruction using learned convolutional sparse priors. We demonstrate high-quality color and NIR imaging for challenging scenes, even including high-frequency structured NIR illumination. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated on a large data set of experimental captures, and simulated benchmark results which demonstrate that this work achieves unprecedented reconstruction quality.

Estimation of cardiac motion in cine-MRI sequences by correlation transform optical flow of monogenic features distance

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gao, Bin; Liu, Wanyu; Wang, Liang; Liu, Zhengjun; Croisille, Pierre; Delachartre, Philippe; Clarysse, Patrick

2016-12-01

Cine-MRI is widely used for the analysis of cardiac function in clinical routine, because of its high soft tissue contrast and relatively short acquisition time in comparison with other cardiac MRI techniques. The gray level distribution in cardiac cine-MRI is relatively homogenous within the myocardium, and can therefore make motion quantification difficult. To ensure that the motion estimation problem is well posed, more image features have to be considered. This work is inspired by a method previously developed for color image processing. The monogenic signal provides a framework to estimate the local phase, orientation, and amplitude, of an image, three features which locally characterize the 2D intensity profile. The independent monogenic features are combined into a 3D matrix for motion estimation. To improve motion estimation accuracy, we chose the zero-mean normalized cross-correlation as a matching measure, and implemented a bilateral filter for denoising and edge-preservation. The monogenic features distance is used in lieu of the color space distance in the bilateral filter. Results obtained from four realistic simulated sequences outperformed two other state of the art methods even in the presence of noise. The motion estimation errors (end point error) using our proposed method were reduced by about 20% in comparison with those obtained by the other tested methods. The new methodology was evaluated on four clinical sequences from patients presenting with cardiac motion dysfunctions and one healthy volunteer. The derived strain fields were analyzed favorably in their ability to identify myocardial regions with impaired motion.

Performance analysis of model based iterative reconstruction with dictionary learning in transportation security CT

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Haneda, Eri; Luo, Jiajia; Can, Ali; Ramani, Sathish; Fu, Lin; De Man, Bruno

2016-05-01

In this study, we implement and compare model based iterative reconstruction (MBIR) with dictionary learning (DL) over MBIR with pairwise pixel-difference regularization, in the context of transportation security. DL is a technique of sparse signal representation using an over complete dictionary which has provided promising results in image processing applications including denoising,1 as well as medical CT reconstruction.2 It has been previously reported that DL produces promising results in terms of noise reduction and preservation of structural details, especially for low dose and few-view CT acquisitions.2 A distinguishing feature of transportation security CT is that scanned baggage may contain items with a wide range of material densities. While medical CT typically scans soft tissues, blood with and without contrast agents, and bones, luggage typically contains more high density materials (i.e. metals and glass), which can produce severe distortions such as metal streaking artifacts. Important factors of security CT are the emphasis on image quality such as resolution, contrast, noise level, and CT number accuracy for target detection. While MBIR has shown exemplary performance in the trade-off of noise reduction and resolution preservation, we demonstrate that DL may further improve this trade-off. In this study, we used the KSVD-based DL3 combined with the MBIR cost-minimization framework and compared results to Filtered Back Projection (FBP) and MBIR with pairwise pixel-difference regularization. We performed a parameter analysis to show the image quality impact of each parameter. We also investigated few-view CT acquisitions where DL can show an additional advantage relative to pairwise pixel difference regularization.

TU-EF-204-02: Hiigh Quality and Sub-MSv Cerebral CT Perfusion Imaging

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Li, Ke; Niu, Kai; Wu, Yijing

2015-06-15

Purpose: CT Perfusion (CTP) imaging is of great importance in acute ischemic stroke management due to its potential to detect hypoperfused yet salvageable tissue and distinguish it from definitely unsalvageable tissue. However, current CTP imaging suffers from poor image quality and high radiation dose (up to 5 mSv). The purpose of this work was to demonstrate that technical innovations such as Prior Image Constrained Compressed Sensing (PICCS) have the potential to address these challenges and achieve high quality and sub-mSv CTP imaging. Methods: (1) A spatial-temporal 4D cascaded system model was developed to indentify the bottlenecks in the current CTPmore » technology; (2) A task-based framework was developed to optimize the CTP system parameters; (3) Guided by (1) and (2), PICCS was customized for the reconstruction of CTP source images. Digital anthropomorphic perfusion phantoms, animal studies, and preliminary human subject studies were used to validate and evaluate the potentials of using these innovations to advance the CTP technology. Results: The 4D cascaded model was validated in both phantom and canine stroke models. Based upon this cascaded model, it has been discovered that, as long as the spatial resolution and noise properties of the 4D source CT images are given, the 3D MTF and NPS of the final CTP maps can be analytically derived for a given set of processing methods and parameters. The cascaded model analysis also identified that the most critical technical factor in CTP is how to acquire and reconstruct high quality source images; it has very little to do with the denoising techniques often used after parametric perfusion calculations. This explained why PICCS resulted in a five-fold dose reduction or substantial improvement in image quality. Conclusion: Technical innovations generated promising results towards achieving high quality and sub-mSv CTP imaging for reliable and safe assessment of acute ischemic strokes. K. Li, K. Niu, Y. Wu: Nothing to disclose. G.-H. Chen: Research funded, GE Healthcare; Research funded, Siemens AX.« less