• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.215-223
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• 2016

Purpose: The management of metal-induced field inhomogeneities is one of the major concerns of distortion-free magnetic resonance images near metallic implants. The recently proposed method called "Slice Encoding for Metal Artifact Correction (SEMAC)" is an effective spin echo pulse sequence of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) near metallic implants. However, as SEMAC uses the noisy resolved data elements, SEMAC images can have a major problem for improving the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) without compromising the correction of metal artifacts. To address that issue, this paper presents a novel reconstruction technique for providing an improvement of the SNR in SEMAC images without sacrificing the correction of metal artifacts. Materials and Methods: Low-rank approximation in each coil image is first performed to suppress the noise in the slice direction, because the signal is highly correlated between SEMAC-encoded slices. Secondly, SEMAC images are reconstructed by the best linear unbiased estimator (BLUE), also known as Gauss-Markov or weighted least squares. Noise levels and correlation in the receiver channels are considered for the sake of SNR optimization. To this end, since distorted excitation profiles are sparse, $l_1$ minimization performs well in recovering the sparse distorted excitation profiles and the sparse modeling of our approach offers excellent correction of metal-induced distortions. Results: Three images reconstructed using SEMAC, SEMAC with the conventional two-step noise reduction, and the proposed image denoising for metal MRI exploiting sparsity and low rank approximation algorithm were compared. The proposed algorithm outperformed two methods and produced 119% SNR better than SEMAC and 89% SNR better than SEMAC with the conventional two-step noise reduction. Conclusion: We successfully demonstrated that the proposed, novel algorithm for SEMAC, if compared with conventional de-noising methods, substantially improves SNR and reduces artifacts.

• Journal of radiological science and technology
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.655-661
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• 2021

Positron emission tomography (PET) images is affected by acquisition time, short acquisition times results in low gamma counts leading to degradation of image quality by statistical noise. Noise2Void(N2V) is self supervised denoising model that is convolutional neural network (CNN) based deep learning. The purpose of this study is to evaluate denoising performance of N2V for PET image with a short acquisition time. The phantom was scanned as a list mode for 10 min using Biograph mCT40 of PET/CT (Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany). We compared PET images using NEMA image-quality phantom for standard acquisition time (10 min), short acquisition time (2min) and simulated PET image (S2 min). To evaluate performance of N2V, the peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), normalized root mean square error (NRMSE), structural similarity index (SSIM) and radio-activity recovery coefficient (RC) were used. The PSNR, NRMSE and SSIM for 2 min and S2 min PET images compared to 10min PET image were 30.983, 33.936, 9.954, 7.609 and 0.916, 0.934 respectively. The RC for spheres with S2 min PET image also met European Association of Nuclear Medicine Research Ltd. (EARL) FDG PET accreditation program. We confirmed generated S2 min PET image from N2V deep learning showed improvement results compared to 2 min PET image and The PET images on visual analysis were also comparable between 10 min and S2 min PET images. In conclusion, noisy PET image by means of short acquisition time using N2V denoising network model can be improved image quality without underestimation of radioactivity.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.181-189
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• 2012

Recently, interest in potential for estimating water quality using high resolution satellite images is increasing. However, low SNR(Signal to Noise Ratio) over inland water and radiometric errors such as non-linearity of brightness value of high resolution satellite images often lead to accuracy degradation in water quality estimation. Therefore radiometric correction should be carried out to estimate water quality for high resolution satellite images. For KOMPSAT-2 images parameters for brightness value-radiance conversion are not available and precise radiometric correction is difficult. To exploit KOMPSAT-2 images for water quality monitoring, it is necessary to investigate non-linearity of brightness value and noise over inland water. In this paper, we performed brightness value comparison between KOMPSAT-2 images and IKONOS/GeoEye-1, which are known to show the linearity. We used the images obtained over the same area and on the same date for comparison. As a result, we showed that although KOMPSAT-2 images are more noisy;the trend of brightness value and pattern of noise are almost similar to reference images. The results showed that appropriate target area to minimize the impact of noise was $5{\times}5$. Non-linearity of brightness value between KOMPSAT-2 and reference images was not observed. Therefore we could conclude that KOMPSAT-2 may be used for estimation of water quality parameters such as concentration of chlorophyll.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.102-112
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• 2013

In this paper, two step processing method of contour extraction and complement which contain hexagonal shape for low contrast and noisy images is proposed. This method is based on the combination of Laplacian-Gaussian filter and an idea of filters which are dependent on the shape. At the first step, an algorithm which has six masks as its extractors to extract the hexagonal edges especially in the corners is used. Here, two tricorn filters are used to detect the tricorn joints of hexagons and other four masks are used to enhance the line segments of hexagonal edges. As a natural image, a corneal endothelial cell image which usually has regular hexagonal form is selected. The edge extraction of hexagonal shapes in corneal endothelial cell is important for clinical diagnosis. The proposed algorithm and other conventional methods are applied to noisy hexagonal images to evaluate each efficiency. As a result, this proposed algorithm shows a robustness against noises and better detection ability in the aspects of the output signal to noise ratio, the edge coincidence ratio and the extraction accuracy factor as compared with other conventional methods. At the second step, the lacking part of the thinned image by an energy minimum algorithm is complemented, and then the area and distribution of cells which give necessary information for medical diagnosis are computed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.663-670
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• 2023

In this study, we aimed to perform a comparative evaluation using quantitative factors between a region-growing based segmentation with noise reduction algorithms and a U-Net based segmentation. Initially, we applied median filter, median modified Wiener filter, and fast non-local means algorithm to computed tomography (CT) images, followed by region-growing based segmentation. Additionally, we trained a U-Net based segmentation model to perform segmentation. Subsequently, to compare and evaluate the segmentation performance of cases with noise reduction algorithms and cases with U-Net, we measured root mean square error (RMSE) and peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), universal quality image index (UQI), and dice similarity coefficient (DSC). The results showed that using U-Net for segmentation yielded the most improved performance. The values of RMSE, PSNR, UQI, and DSC were measured as 0.063, 72.11, 0.841, and 0.982 respectively, which indicated improvements of 1.97, 1.09, 5.30, and 1.99 times compared to noisy images. In conclusion, U-Net proved to be effective in enhancing segmentation performance compared to noise reduction algorithms in CT images.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.410-418
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• 2023

Recently, advancements and commercialization in the field of maritime autonomous surface ships (MASS) has rapidly progressed. Concurrently, studies are also underway to develop methods for automatically surveying the condition of various on-board equipment remotely to ensure the navigational safety of MASS. One key issue that has gained prominence is the method to obtain values from analog gauges installed in various equipment through image processing. This approach has the advantage of enabling the non-contact detection of gauge values without modifying or changing already installed or planned equipment, eliminating the need for type approval changes from shipping classifications. The objective of this study was to identify a dynamically changing indicator needle within noisy images of analog gauges. The needle object must be identified because its position significantly affects the accurate reading of gauge values. An analog pressure gauge attached to an emergency fire pump model was used for image capture to identify the needle object. The acquired images were pre-processed through Gaussian filtering, thresholding, and morphological operations. The needle object was then identified through Hough Transform. The experimental results confirmed that the center and object of the indicator needle could be identified in images of noisy analog gauges. The findings suggest that the image processing method applied in this study can be utilized for shape identification in analog gauges installed on ships. This study is expected to be applicable as an image processing method for the automatic remote survey of MASS.

• International Journal of Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Systems
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.102-110
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• 2015

The main source of noise in computed tomography (CT) images is a quantum noise, which results from statistical fluctuations of X-ray quanta reaching the detector. This paper proposes a neural network (NN) based hybrid filter for removing quantum noise. The proposed filter consists of bilateral filters (BFs), a single or multiple neural edge enhancer(s) (NEE), and a neural filter (NF) to combine them. The BFs take into account the difference in value from the neighbors, to preserve edges while smoothing. The NEE is used to clearly enhance the desired edges from noisy images. The NF acts like a fusion operator, and attempts to construct an enhanced output image. Several measurements are used to evaluate the image quality, like the root mean square error (RMSE), the improvement in signal to noise ratio (ISNR), the standard deviation ratio (MSR), and the contrast to noise ratio (CNR). Also, the modulation transfer function (MTF) is used as a means of determining how well the edge structure is preserved. In terms of all those measurements and means, the proposed filter shows better performance than the guided filter, and the nonlocal means (NLM) filter. In addition, there is no severe restriction to select the number of inputs for the fusion operator differently from the neuro-fuzzy system. Therefore, without concerning too much about the filter selection for fusion, one could apply the proposed hybrid filter to various images with different modalities, once the corresponding noise characteristics are explored.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.709-721
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• 2009

This paper discusses an efficient image segmentation using morphological watershed algorithm that is robust to noise. Morphological image segmentation consists of four steps: image simplification, computation of gradient image and watershed algorithm and region merging. Conventional watershed segmentation exhibits a serious weakness for over-segmentation of images. In this paper we present a morphological edge detection methods for detecting edges under noisy condition and apply our watershed algorithm to the resulting gradient images and merge regions using Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for eliminating irrelevant regions in the resulting segmented images. Experimental results are analyzed in both qualitative analysis through visual inspection and quantitative analysis with percentage error as well as computational time needed to segment images. The proposed algorithm can efficiently improve segmentation accuracy and significantly reduce the speed of computational time.

• Journal of the Korean Data and Information Science Society
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.371-380
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• 2011

The noise caused by a variety of reasons worsens the quality of input image when we use the images reproducing device. The basic difficulty to solve this problem is that the noise and the signal are difficult to be distinguished. Contrast enhancement such as unsharp masking is one of the most important procedures to improve the quality of input images. The conventional unsharp masking enhances the images by adding their amplified high frequency components. The noise component of the input images, however, also tends to be amplified due to the nature of the unsharp masking. This paper considers the block approach for detecting niose and image feature of the input image so that the unsharp masking could be adaptively applied accordingly. Simulation results show that it is made possible to enhance contrast of the image without boosting up the noisy components by applying the proposed algorithm.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.695-708
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• 2011

Image fusion is the process of combining multiple images of the same scene into a single fused image with application to many fields, such as remote sensing, computer vision, robotics, medical imaging and military affairs. The widely used image fusion rules that use wavelet transform have been based on a simple comparison with the activity measures of local windows such as mean and standard deviation. In this case, information features from the original images are excluded in the fusion image and distorted fusion images are obtained for noisy images. In this paper, we propose the use of a nonparametric squared ranks test on the quality of variance for two samples in order to overcome the influence of the noise and guarantee the homogeneity of the fused image. We evaluate the method both quantitatively and qualitatively for image fusion as well as compare it to some existing fusion methods. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method is effective and provides satisfactory fusion results.