6,061 research outputs found
Speckle Reduction with Attenuation Compensation for Skin OCT Images Enhancement
The enhancement of skin image in optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging can help
dermatologists to investigate tissue layers more accurately, hence the more efficient diagnosis. In this paper, we
propose an image enhancement technique including speckle reduction, attenuation compensation and cleaning to
improve the quality of OCT skin images. A weighted median filter is designed to reduce the level of speckle
noise while preserving the contrast. A novel border detection technique is designed to outline the main skin layers,
stratum corneum, epidermis and dermis. A model of the light attenuation is then used to estimate the absorption
coefficient of epidermis and dermis layers and compensate the brightness of the structures at deeper levels. The
undesired part of the image is removed using a simple cleaning algorithm. The performance of the algorithm has
been evaluated visually and numerically using the commonly used no-reference quality metrics. The results shows
an improvement in the quality of the images.
Keywords: Optical coherence tomography (OCT), Skin, Image enhancement, Speckle reduction, Attenuation
compensation
A Deep Learning Approach to Denoise Optical Coherence Tomography Images of the Optic Nerve Head
Purpose: To develop a deep learning approach to de-noise optical coherence
tomography (OCT) B-scans of the optic nerve head (ONH).
Methods: Volume scans consisting of 97 horizontal B-scans were acquired
through the center of the ONH using a commercial OCT device (Spectralis) for
both eyes of 20 subjects. For each eye, single-frame (without signal
averaging), and multi-frame (75x signal averaging) volume scans were obtained.
A custom deep learning network was then designed and trained with 2,328 "clean
B-scans" (multi-frame B-scans), and their corresponding "noisy B-scans" (clean
B-scans + gaussian noise) to de-noise the single-frame B-scans. The performance
of the de-noising algorithm was assessed qualitatively, and quantitatively on
1,552 B-scans using the signal to noise ratio (SNR), contrast to noise ratio
(CNR), and mean structural similarity index metrics (MSSIM).
Results: The proposed algorithm successfully denoised unseen single-frame OCT
B-scans. The denoised B-scans were qualitatively similar to their corresponding
multi-frame B-scans, with enhanced visibility of the ONH tissues. The mean SNR
increased from dB (single-frame) to dB
(denoised). For all the ONH tissues, the mean CNR increased from (single-frame) to (denoised). The MSSIM increased from
(single frame) to (denoised) when compared with
the corresponding multi-frame B-scans.
Conclusions: Our deep learning algorithm can denoise a single-frame OCT
B-scan of the ONH in under 20 ms, thus offering a framework to obtain superior
quality OCT B-scans with reduced scanning times and minimal patient discomfort
QuaSI: Quantile Sparse Image Prior for Spatio-Temporal Denoising of Retinal OCT Data
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) enables high-resolution and non-invasive
3D imaging of the human retina but is inherently impaired by speckle noise.
This paper introduces a spatio-temporal denoising algorithm for OCT data on a
B-scan level using a novel quantile sparse image (QuaSI) prior. To remove
speckle noise while preserving image structures of diagnostic relevance, we
implement our QuaSI prior via median filter regularization coupled with a Huber
data fidelity model in a variational approach. For efficient energy
minimization, we develop an alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM)
scheme using a linearization of median filtering. Our spatio-temporal method
can handle both, denoising of single B-scans and temporally consecutive
B-scans, to gain volumetric OCT data with enhanced signal-to-noise ratio. Our
algorithm based on 4 B-scans only achieved comparable performance to averaging
13 B-scans and outperformed other current denoising methods.Comment: submitted to MICCAI'1
Image Enhancement and Noise Reduction Using Modified Delay-Multiply-and-Sum Beamformer: Application to Medical Photoacoustic Imaging
Photoacoustic imaging (PAI) is an emerging biomedical imaging modality
capable of providing both high contrast and high resolution of optical and
UltraSound (US) imaging. When a short duration laser pulse illuminates the
tissue as a target of imaging, tissue induces US waves and detected waves can
be used to reconstruct optical absorption distribution. Since receiving part of
PA consists of US waves, a large number of beamforming algorithms in US imaging
can be applied on PA imaging. Delay-and-Sum (DAS) is the most common
beamforming algorithm in US imaging. However, make use of DAS beamformer leads
to low resolution images and large scale of off-axis signals contribution. To
address these problems a new paradigm namely Delay-Multiply-and-Sum (DMAS),
which was used as a reconstruction algorithm in confocal microwave imaging for
breast cancer detection, was introduced for US imaging. Consequently, DMAS was
used in PA imaging systems and it was shown this algorithm results in
resolution enhancement and sidelobe degrading. However, in presence of high
level of noise the reconstructed image still suffers from high contribution of
noise. In this paper, a modified version of DMAS beamforming algorithm is
proposed based on DAS inside DMAS formula expansion. The quantitative and
qualitative results show that proposed method results in more noise reduction
and resolution enhancement in expense of contrast degrading. For the
simulation, two-point target, along with lateral variation in two depths of
imaging are employed and it is evaluated under high level of noise in imaging
medium. Proposed algorithm in compare to DMAS, results in reduction of lateral
valley for about 19 dB followed by more distinguished two-point target.
Moreover, levels of sidelobe are reduced for about 25 dB.Comment: This paper was accepted and presented at Iranian Conference on
Electrical Engineering (ICEE) 201
Wavelet-based denoising for 3D OCT images
Optical coherence tomography produces high resolution medical images based on spatial and temporal coherence of the optical waves backscattered from the scanned tissue. However, the same coherence introduces speckle noise as well; this degrades the quality of acquired images.
In this paper we propose a technique for noise reduction of 3D OCT images, where the 3D volume is considered as a sequence of 2D images, i.e., 2D slices in depth-lateral projection plane. In the proposed method we first perform recursive temporal filtering through the estimated motion trajectory between the 2D slices using noise-robust motion estimation/compensation scheme previously proposed for video denoising. The temporal filtering scheme reduces the noise level and adapts the motion compensation on it. Subsequently, we apply a spatial filter for speckle reduction in order to remove the remainder of noise in the 2D slices. In this scheme the spatial (2D) speckle-nature of noise in OCT is modeled and used for spatially adaptive denoising. Both the temporal and the spatial filter are wavelet-based techniques, where for the temporal filter two resolution scales are used and for the spatial one four resolution scales.
The evaluation of the proposed denoising approach is done on demodulated 3D OCT images on different sources and of different resolution. For optimizing the parameters for best denoising performance fantom OCT images were used. The denoising performance of the proposed method was measured in terms of SNR, edge sharpness preservation and contrast-to-noise ratio. A comparison was made to the state-of-the-art methods for noise reduction in 2D OCT images, where the proposed approach showed to be advantageous in terms of both objective and subjective quality measures
Sparse And Low Rank Decomposition Based Batch Image Alignment for Speckle Reduction of retinal OCT Images
Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is an emerging technique in the field of
biomedical imaging, with applications in ophthalmology, dermatology, coronary
imaging etc. Due to the underlying physics, OCT images usually suffer from a
granular pattern, called speckle noise, which restricts the process of
interpretation. Here, a sparse and low rank decomposition based method is used
for speckle reduction in retinal OCT images. This technique works on input data
that consists of several B-scans of the same location. The next step is the
batch alignment of the images using a sparse and low-rank decomposition based
technique. Finally the denoised image is created by median filtering of the
low-rank component of the processed data. Simultaneous decomposition and
alignment of the images result in better performance in comparison to simple
registration-based methods that are used in the literature for noise reduction
of OCT images.Comment: Accepted for presentation at ISBI'1
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