• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.1527-1532
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• 2023

The noise reduction algorithm using the non-local means (NLM) approach is very efficient in nuclear medicine imaging. In this study, the applicability of the NLM noise reduction algorithm in single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) images with a brain phantom and the optimization of the NLM algorithm by changing the smoothing factors according to various reconstruction methods are investigated. Brain phantom images were reconstructed using filtered back projection (FBP) and ordered subset expectation maximization (OSEM). The smoothing factor of the NLM noise reduction algorithm determined the optimal coefficient of variation (COV) and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) results at a value of 0.020 in the FBP and OSEM reconstruction methods. We confirmed that the FBP- and OSEM-based SPECT images using the algorithm applied with the optimal smoothing factor improved the COV and CNR by 66.94% and 8.00% on average, respectively, compared to those of the original image. In conclusion, an optimized smoothing factor was derived from the NLM approach-based algorithm in brain SPECT images and may be applicable to various nuclear medicine imaging techniques in the future.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.825-836
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• 2016

In this paper, a speed-up technique for the non-local means (NLM) image denoising method based on local binary descriptor (LBD) is proposed. In the NLM, most of the computation time is spent on searching for non-local similar patches in the search window. The local binary descriptor which represents the structure of patch as binary strings is employed to speed up the search process in the NLM. The descriptor allows for a fast and accurate preselection of non-local similar patches by bitwise operations. Using this approach, a tradeoff between time-saving and noise removal can be obtained. Simulations exhibit that despite being principally constructed for speed, the proposed algorithm outperforms in terms of denoising quality as well. Furthermore, a parallel implementation on GPU brings NLM-LBD to real-time image denoising.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.21 no.12spc
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• pp.556-564
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• 2021

Numerous spatial and transform-domain-based conventional denoising algorithms struggle to keep critical and minute structural features of the image, especially at high noise levels. Although neural network approaches are effective, they are not always reliable since they demand a large quantity of training data, are computationally complicated, and take a long time to construct the model. A new framework of enhanced hybrid filtering is developed for denoising color images tainted by additive white Gaussian Noise with the goal of reducing algorithmic complexity and improving performance. In the first stage of the proposed approach, the noisy image is refined using a high-dimensional non-local means filter based on Principal Component Analysis, followed by the extraction of the method noise. The wavelet transform and SURE Shrink techniques are used to further culture this method noise. The final denoised image is created by combining the results of these two steps. Experiments were carried out on a set of standard color images corrupted by Gaussian noise with multiple standard deviations. Comparative analysis of empirical outcome indicates that the proposed method outperforms leading-edge denoising strategies in terms of consistency and performance while maintaining the visual quality. This algorithm ensures homogeneous noise reduction, which is almost independent of noise variations. The power of both the spatial and transform domains is harnessed in this multi realm consolidation technique. Rather than processing individual colors, it works directly on the multispectral image. Uses minimal resources and produces superior quality output in the optimal execution time.