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An expectation maximization approach to impulsive noise removal in digital radiography

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International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Objective

Impulsive noise constitutes a serious disturbing factor in digital radiography. The aim of this paper is to propose a new filter which is capable of eliminating efficiently this kind of noise.

Method

The filter is based on the classical switching scheme: the pulses are first detected and then corrected through a median filter. The novelty element is a pulse detector based on an adequate statistical model of the image noise. This model is constituted of a mixture of photon counting and impulsive noise.

Results

The filter operation has been verified and compared with existing algorithms on both synthetic and real images. The filter is capable to remove, on the average, more than 94% of the pulses, with a positive predictive value higher than 80%. The computational time required to filter a radiograph of 4.5 Mpixels is just above 2 s.

Conclusion

Thanks to the accurate description of the noise statistics and the efficient computational scheme implemented, the filter can be used to reliably and quickly remove impulsive noise from digital radiographs. The experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed filter with respect to traditional methods.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. AIS Lab., Computer Science Department, University of Milan, Milan, Italy

    I. Frosio & N. A. Borghese

  2. Medicine, Surgery and Dentistry Department, University of Milan, Milan, Italy

    S. Abati

Authors
  1. I. Frosio
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  2. S. Abati
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  3. N. A. Borghese
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to I. Frosio.

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Frosio, I., Abati, S. & Borghese, N.A. An expectation maximization approach to impulsive noise removal in digital radiography. Int J CARS 3, 91–96 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-008-0162-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-008-0162-4

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