Abstract
Purpose: A bilateral filter (BF) has the property of de-noising digital images while preserving edges. This paper investigates the impact of selecting the BF variables in order to diminish the deterioration of SNR due to reducing the number of excitations (NEX) per image in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique. The paper studies the behavior of the BF on the axial, sagittal, and coronal MRI orientations acquired by spin echo (SE), turbo spin echo (TSE), and the fluid attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) pulse sequences from an open MRI device. Method: a set of MRI head images where acquired at different NEXs. The BF was applied at various values of window sizes, filter domains, and filter ranges. The comparison between the high NEX and the BF low NEX MR images was calculated using the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), the mean-square error (MSE), and the normalized absolute error (NAE). Results: Numerically, the BF is able to achieve up to 29, 44, and 59 % noise suppression from the T2 axial, T1 sagittal, and coronal MR views, respectively. Conclusions: The BF can successfully compensate a part of the SNR decrease due to reduce NEX. The behavior of the BF varies with the type of MR view and the type of pulse sequence. The BF is a successful tool to enhance the appearance of low NEX MR images acquired from open MR devices. This means that BF can contribute in shortening the MRI scan time.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Manjon, J.V., Caballero, J.C., Lull, J.J., Marti, G.G., Bonmati, L.M., Robles, M.: MRI denoising using non-local means. Med. Image Anal. 12, 514–523 (2008)
Kumar, V., Saini, S., Dhiman, S.: Quality improvement on MRI corrupted with Rician noise using wave atom transform. Int. J. Comput. Appl. 37, 28–32 (2012)
Anand, C.S., Sahambi, J.S.: Wavelet domain non-linear filtering for MRI denoising. Magn. Reson. Imaging 28, 842–861 (2011)
Arif, A.S., Mansor, S., Logeswaran, R.: Combined bilateral and anisotropic-diffusion filters for medical image de-noising. Presented at the IEEE Student Conference on Research and Development, Malaysia (2011)
Rydell, J., Knutsson, H., Borga, M.: Bilateral filtering of fMRI data. IEEE J. Sel. Topics Signal Process. 2, 891–896 (2008)
Walker, S.A., Miller, D., Tanabe, J.: Bilateral spatial filtering: refining methods for localizing brain activation in the presence of parenchymal abnormalities. NeuroImage 33, 564–569 (2006)
Hamarneh, G., Hradsky, J.: Bilateral filtering of diffusion tensor magnetic resonance images. IEEE Trans. Image Process. 16, 2463–2475 (2007)
Hwang, J., Han, Y., Park, H.W.: Segmentation of brain parenchyma using bilateral filtering and region growing. In: Proceedings of the \(29^{\rm th}\) Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society EMBS, France, pp. 6263–6266, 23–26 August 2007
Gal, Y., Mehnert, A.J.H., Bradley, A.P., McMahon, K., Kennedy, D., Crozier, S.: Denoising of dynamic contrast-enhanced MR images using dynamic nonlocal means. IEEE Trans. Med. Imaging 29, 302–310 (2010)
McPhee, K.C., Denk, C., Al-Rekabi, Z., Rauscher, A.: Bilateral filtering of magnetic resonance phase images. Magn. Reson. Imaging 29, 1023–1029 (2011)
Yang, X., Fei, B.A.: MR brain classification method based on multiscale and multiblock fuzzy C-means, Presented at the \(5^{\rm th}\) International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedical Engineering (iCBBE), USA, May 10–12 (2012)
Tomasi, C., Manduchi, R.: Bilateral filtering for gray and color images. In: Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision, India, pp. 839–846, Jan 4–7 (1998)
Elad, M.: On the origin of the bilateral Filter and ways to improve it. IEEE Trans. Image Process. 11, 1141–1151 (2002)
Barash, D.: Fundamental relationship between bilateral filtering, adaptive smoothing, and the nonlinear diffusion equation. IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell. 24, 844–847 (2002)
Grgic, S., Grgic, M., Mrak, M.: Reliability of objective picture quality measures. J. Electr. Eng. 55, 3–10 (2004)
Verma, A., Sharma, B.: Comparative analysis in medical imaging. Int. J. Comput. Appl. 1, 87–92 (2010)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Al-Hinnawi, A.R., Daear, M. Assessment of bilateral filter on low NEX open MRI views. SIViP 9, 9–17 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-012-0417-y
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-012-0417-y