• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.51 no.2
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• pp.439-443
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• 2019

To improve the noise characteristics, software-based noise reduction algorithms are widely used in cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) pixelated semiconductor gamma camera system. The purpose of this study was to develop an improved median filtering algorithm using a thresholding method for noise reduction in a CZT pixelated semiconductor gamma camera system. The gamma camera system simulated is a CZT pixelated semiconductor detector with a pixel-matched parallel-hole collimator and the spatial resolution phatnom was designed with the Geant4 Application for Tomography Emission (GATE). In addition, a noise reduction algorithm with a median filter using an improved thresholding method is developed and we applied our proposed algorithm to an acquired spatial resolution phantom image. According to the results, the proposed median filter improved the noise characteristics compared to a conventional median filter. In particular, the average for normalized noise power spectrum, contrast to noise ratio, and coefficient of variation results using the proposed median filter were 10, 1.11, and 1.19 times better than results using conventional median filter, respectively. In conclusion, our results show that the proposed median filter using improved the thresholding method results in high imaging performance when applied in a CZT semiconductor gamma camera system.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.1
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• pp.222-228
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• 2023

This study aimed to analyze the applicability of the improved median filter in positron emission tomography (PET)/magnetic resonance (MR) fusion images based on parallel imaging using generalized autocalibrating partially parallel acquisition (GRAPPA). In this study, a PET/MR fusion imaging system based on a 3.0T magnetic field and ¹⁸F radioisotope were used. An improved median filter that can set a mask of the median value more efficiently than before was modeled and applied to the acquired image. As quantitative evaluation parameters of the noise level, the contrast to noise ratio (CNR) and coefficient of variation (COV) were calculated. Additionally, no-reference-based evaluation parameters were used to analyze the overall image quality. We confirmed that the CNR and COV values of the PET/MR fusion images to which the improved median filter was applied improved by approximately 3.32 and 2.19 times on average, respectively, compared to the noisy image. In addition, the no-reference-based evaluation results showed a similar trend for the noise-level results. In conclusion, we demonstrated that it can be supplemented by using an improved median filter, which suggests the problem of image quality degradation of PET/MR fusion images that shortens scan time using GRAPPA.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.41 no.6
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• pp.195-208
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• 2004

Histogram is a very useful method on various practical aspect. With increasing importance of simple calculation method and convenience, it became the basic method in digital image processing nowadays. However, basic limit of using histogram is losing spatial position information of pixels on image. This paper reanalyzes image by presenting histogram with spatial position information(spatial histogram). Also using that result, level order recursive median filter is realized. Presented recursive median filter showed much improved results on edge maintenance aspect compared to existing recursive median filter.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.9
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• pp.3380-3389
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• 2022

We evaluated the performance of an improved hybrid median filter (IHMF) applied to X-ray computed tomography (CT) images obtained using a high-resolution photon-counting cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) detector. To study how the proposed approach improves the image quality, we measured the noise levels and the overall CT-image quality. We established a CZT imaging system with a detector length of 5.12 cm and thickness of 0.3 cm and acquired phantom images. To evaluate the efficacy of the proposed filter, we first modeled two conventional median filters. Subsequently, we were able to achieve a normalized noise power spectrum result of ~10^-8 mm², and furthermore, the proposed method improved the contrast-to-noise ratio by a factor of ~1.51 and the coefficient of variation by 1.55 relative to the counterpart values of the no-filter image. In addition, the IHMF exhibited the best performance among the three filters considered as regards the peak signal-to-noise ratio and no-reference-based image-quality evaluation parameters. Thus, our results demonstrate that the IHMF approach provides a superior image performance over conventional median filtering methods when applied to actual CZT X-ray CT images.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.55 no.9
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• pp.429-434
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• 2006

In this paper, detection based - adaptive windowed nonlinear filter(DB-AWNF) is proposed for removing salt-pepper noise in infrared image. This filter is composed of impulse detector and window-size-variable median filters. Impulse detector checks whether current pixel is impulse or not using range function and nonlinear location estimator. If impulse is detected, current pixel is filtered according to four kinds of local masks by use of median filter. If not, current pixel is delivered to output like identity filter. In Qualitative view, the proposed could have removed heavy corrupted noise up to 30% and reserved the details of image. In quantitative view, PSNR was measured. The proposed could have about 12-31[dB] more improved performance than those of median $(3{\times}3)$ filter and 13-29[dB] more improved performance than those of median $(5{\times}5)$ filter.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.151-165
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• 2010

Images are often corrupted by impulse noise due to a noise sensor or channel transmission errors. The filter based on SVM(Support Vector Machine) and the improved adaptive median filtering is proposed to preserve image details while suppressing impulse noise for image restoration. Our approach uses an SVM impulse detector to judge whether the input pixel is noise. If a pixel is detected as a noisy pixel, the improved adaptive median filter is used to replace it. To demonstrate the performance of the proposed filter, extensive simulation experiments have been conducted under both salt-and-pepper and random-valued impulse noise models to compare our method with many other well known filters in the qualitative measure and quantitative measures such as PSNR and MAE. Experimental results indicate that the proposed filter performs significantly better than many other existing filters.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.52 no.10
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• pp.2328-2333
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• 2020

The filter technique was applied to noise images, as noise is the significant factor that cause poor image quality due to lower photon counting. The purpose of this study is to confirm that image quality can be improved using the median modified Wiener filter (MMWF) technique; this is achieved via a National Electrical Manufacturers Association International Electrotechnical Commission body phantom with four large spheres that are filled with the ^99mTc radioisotope when evaluating the image quality. Conventional filters such as Wiener, Gaussian, and median filters were designed, and signal to noise ratio, coefficient of variation, and contrast to noise ratio were used as the evaluation parameters. The improvement in the image quality was in the following order, from the least to the highest improvement, in all cases: Wiener filter, Gaussian filter, median filter, and the MMWF technique. The results show that the image quality was improved from 20.6 to 65.5%, 7.4-40.3%, and 12.7-44.7% for the SNR, COV, and CNR values, respectively, when using the MMWF technique, compared with the use of conventional filters. In conclusion, our results demonstrated that the MMWF technique is useful for reducing the noise distribution in gamma camera images.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Navigation
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.99-109
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• 1996

Though median filter is used for removing noise and smoothing image. But, the result of it has distortion around edge. And then, this paper proposes new noise removing algorithm by recursive morphological processing. Basic operation is same each other, but there is some different processing method between recursive morphology and general morphology theory. This recursive morphological filter can be viewed as the weighted order static filter, and then it has a weighted SE(structuring element). Especially using this algorithm to remove the 10% gaussian noise, this paper confirmed that PSNR is improved about 0.642~1.5757 db reserving edge well better than the results of the traditional median filter.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Agricultural Machinery Conference
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• 1996.06c
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• pp.842-851
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• 1996

Median filter(MF) has often been applied to color or gray images as a noise fiilter in image processing . Application of MF to binary images was tried in this study. For binary images, MF not only can remove noise but can also work as an indicator showing the dominant color in a region which is called window . Fro example, MF can be used to categorize clusters and to detect interested parts of an object. In other words, MF can also be used to remove unnecessary parts. The function of MF can be intensified by introducing a thresholding value, which is determined by the size of the interested part of an object. This improved MF for binary images is called the modified median filter(MMF), and its applicability to grade produce will be discussed in this paper.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.989-995
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• 2013

Image degradation caused by the impulse noise is generated in the process of image transmission and so on. It has been studied by many researchers in order to remove these noise. The representative impulse noise removal method includes SM filter. Though SM filter will indicate errors by the increasing of impulse noise density. Therefore, in this paper, in order to preserve the edges of the image, and reduce the distortion of the image, an improved adaptive median filter algorithm is proposed. In the simulation results, the algorithm showed excellent results in all several areas, and the PSNR is used as the criterion of evaluation.