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A new software scheme for scatter correction based on a simple radiographic scattering model

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Abstract

In common radiography, image contrast is often limited due mainly to scattered x-rays and noise, decreasing the quantitative usefulness of x-ray images. Several scatter reduction methods based on software correction schemes have been extensively investigated in an attempt to overcome these difficulties, most of which are based on measurement, mathematical-physical modeling, or a combination of both. However, those methods require special equipment, system geometry, and extra manual work to measure scatter characteristics. In this study, we investigated a new software scheme for scatter correction based on a simple radiographic scattering model where the intensity of the scattered x-rays was directly estimated from a single x-ray image using a weighted l1-norm contextual regularization framework. We implemented the proposed algorithm and performed a systematic simulation and experiment to demonstrate its viability. We also conducted some clinical image studies using patient’s image data of breast and L-spine to verify the clinical effectiveness of the proposed scheme. Our results indicate that the degradation of image characteristics by scattered x-rays and noise was effectively recovered by using the proposed software scheme, thus improving radiographic visibility considerably.

The schematic illustrations of scatter suppression methods by using a an antiscatter grid and b a scatter estimation algorithm.

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Funding

This study was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Korea Ministry of Science and ICT (NRF-2017 R1A2B2002891).

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Correspondence to H. Cho.

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Kim, K., Kang, S., Kim, W. et al. A new software scheme for scatter correction based on a simple radiographic scattering model. Med Biol Eng Comput 57, 489–503 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-018-1893-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-018-1893-1

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