Optimally Stabilized PET Image Denoising Using Trilateral Filtering

Low-resolution and signal-dependent noise distribution in positron emission tomography (PET) images makes denoising process an inevitable step prior to qualitative and quantitative image analysis tasks. Conventional PET denoising methods either over-smooth small-sized structures due to resolution limitation or make incorrect assumptions about the noise characteristics. Therefore, clinically important quantitative information may be corrupted. To address these challenges, we introduced a novel approach to remove signal-dependent noise in the PET images where the noise distribution was considered as Poisson-Gaussian mixed. Meanwhile, the generalized Anscombe's transformation (GAT) was used to stabilize varying nature of the PET noise. Other than noise stabilization, it is also desirable for the noise removal filter to preserve the boundaries of the structures while smoothing the noisy regions. Indeed, it is important to avoid significant loss of quantitative information such as standard uptake value (SUV)-based metrics as well as metabolic lesion volume. To satisfy all these properties, we extended bilateral filtering method into trilateral filtering through multiscaling and optimal Gaussianization process. The proposed method was tested on more than 50 PET-CT images from various patients having different cancers and achieved the superior performance compared to the widely used denoising techniques in the literature.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures; to appear in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (MICCAI 2014

Image denoising with multi-layer perceptrons, part 1: comparison with existing algorithms and with bounds

Image denoising can be described as the problem of mapping from a noisy image to a noise-free image. The best currently available denoising methods approximate this mapping with cleverly engineered algorithms. In this work we attempt to learn this mapping directly with plain multi layer perceptrons (MLP) applied to image patches. We will show that by training on large image databases we are able to outperform the current state-of-the-art image denoising methods. In addition, our method achieves results that are superior to one type of theoretical bound and goes a large way toward closing the gap with a second type of theoretical bound. Our approach is easily adapted to less extensively studied types of noise, such as mixed Poisson-Gaussian noise, JPEG artifacts, salt-and-pepper noise and noise resembling stripes, for which we achieve excellent results as well. We will show that combining a block-matching procedure with MLPs can further improve the results on certain images. In a second paper, we detail the training trade-offs and the inner mechanisms of our MLPs

Sparsity Based Poisson Denoising with Dictionary Learning

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 i.i.d. 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. A recent work by Salmon et al. took this route, proposing a patch-based exponential image representation model based on GMM (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.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figure

Image Restoration Using Joint Statistical Modeling in Space-Transform Domain

This paper presents a novel strategy for high-fidelity image restoration by characterizing both local smoothness and nonlocal self-similarity of natural images in a unified statistical manner. The main contributions are three-folds. First, from the perspective of image statistics, a joint statistical modeling (JSM) in an adaptive hybrid space-transform domain is established, which offers a powerful mechanism of combining local smoothness and nonlocal self-similarity simultaneously to ensure a more reliable and robust estimation. Second, a new form of minimization functional for solving image inverse problem is formulated using JSM under regularization-based framework. Finally, in order to make JSM tractable and robust, a new Split-Bregman based algorithm is developed to efficiently solve the above severely underdetermined inverse problem associated with theoretical proof of convergence. Extensive experiments on image inpainting, image deblurring and mixed Gaussian plus salt-and-pepper noise removal applications verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.Comment: 14 pages, 18 figures, 7 Tables, to be published in IEEE Transactions on Circuits System and Video Technology (TCSVT). High resolution pdf version and Code can be found at: http://idm.pku.edu.cn/staff/zhangjian/IRJSM

Wavelet domain Bayesian denoising of string signal in the cosmic microwave background

An algorithm is proposed for denoising the signal induced by cosmic strings in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). A Bayesian approach is taken, based on modeling the string signal in the wavelet domain with generalized Gaussian distributions. Good performance of the algorithm is demonstrated by simulated experiments at arcminute resolution under noise conditions including primary and secondary CMB anisotropies, as well as instrumental noise.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures. Version 2 matches version accepted for publication in MNRAS. Changes include substantial clarifications on our approach and a significant reduction of manuscript lengt