research-article

X-ray CT image denoising with MINF: : A modularized iterative network framework for data from multiple dose levels

Authors:

Xiaodong Yang, and

Jian ZhengAuthors Info & Claims

Volume 152, Issue C

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compbiomed.2022.106419

Published: 01 January 2023 Publication History

Abstract

In clinical applications, multi-dose scan protocols will cause the noise levels of computed tomography (CT) images to fluctuate widely. The popular low-dose CT (LDCT) denoising network outputs denoised images through an end-to-end mapping between an LDCT image and its corresponding ground truth. The limitation of this method is that the reduced noise level of the image may not meet the diagnostic needs of doctors. To establish a denoising model adapted to the multi-noise levels robustness, we proposed a novel and efficient modularized iterative network framework (MINF) to learn the feature of the original LDCT and the outputs of the previous modules, which can be reused in each following module. The proposed network can achieve the goal of gradual denoising, outputting clinical images with different denoising levels, and providing the reviewing physicians with increased confidence in their diagnosis. Moreover, a multi-scale convolutional neural network (MCNN) module is designed to extract as much feature information as possible during the network's training. Extensive experiments on public and private clinical datasets were carried out, and comparisons with several state-of-the-art methods show that the proposed method can achieve satisfactory results for noise suppression of LDCT images. In further comparisons with modularized adaptive processing neural network (MAP-NN), the proposed network shows superior step-by-step or gradual denoising performance. Considering the high quality of gradual denoising results, the proposed method can obtain satisfactory performance in terms of image contrast and detail protection as the level of denoising increases, which shows its potential to be suitable for a multi-dose levels denoising task.

Highlights

•

A novel network framework for low-dose CT step-by-step denoising.

•

MCNN module can extract richer feature information.

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Index Terms

X-ray CT image denoising with MINF: A modularized iterative network framework for data from multiple dose levels
1. Applied computing
  1. Life and medical sciences
2. Computing methodologies
  1. Artificial intelligence
    1. Computer vision
  2. Machine learning
    1. Machine learning approaches
      1. Neural networks

Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

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Information

Published In

cover image Computers in Biology and Medicine

Computers in Biology and Medicine Volume 152, Issue C

Jan 2023

1242 pages

ISSN:0010-4825

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Elsevier Ltd.

Publisher

Pergamon Press, Inc.

United States

Publication History

Published: 01 January 2023

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