A POCS-Based Algorithm for Blocking Artifacts Reduction

An algorithm for blocking artifacts reduction in DCT domain for block-based image coding was developed. The algorithm is based on the projection onto convex set （POCS） theory. Due to the fact that the DCT characteristics of shifted blocks are different caused by the blocking artifacts, a novel smoothness constraint set and the corresponding projection operator were proposed to reduce the blocking artifacts by discarding the undesired high frequency coefficients in the shifted DCT blocks. The experimental resuhs show that the propo,sed algorithm outperforms the conventional algorithms in terms of objective quality, subiective quality, and convergence property.

Artifacts Reduction Using Multi-Scale Feature Attention Network in Compressed Medical Images

Medical image compression is one of the essential technologies to facilitate real-time medical data transmission in remote healthcare applications.In general,image compression can introduce undesired coding artifacts,such as blocking artifacts and ringing effects.In this paper,we proposed a Multi-Scale Feature Attention Network(MSFAN)with two essential parts,which are multi-scale feature extraction layers and feature attention layers to efficiently remove coding artifacts of compressed medical images.Multiscale feature extraction layers have four Feature Extraction(FE)blocks.Each FE block consists of five convolution layers and one CA block for weighted skip connection.In order to optimize the proposed network architectures,a variety of verification tests were conducted using validation dataset.We used Computer Vision Center-Clinic Database(CVC-ClinicDB)consisting of 612 colonoscopy medical images to evaluate the enhancement of image restoration.The proposedMSFAN can achieve improved PSNR gains as high as 0.25 and 0.24 dB on average compared to DnCNNand DCSC,respectively.

A projection-domain iterative algorithm for metal artifact reduction by minimizing the total-variation norm and the negative-pixel energy

Metal objects in X-ray computed tomography can cause severe artifacts.The state-of-the-art metal artifact reduction methods are in the sinogram inpainting category and are iterative methods.This paper proposes a projectiondomain algorithm to reduce the metal artifacts.In this algorithm,the unknowns are the metal-affected projections,while the objective function is set up in the image domain.The data fidelity term is not utilized in the objective function.The objective function of the proposed algorithm consists of two terms:the total variation of the metalremoved image and the energy of the negative-valued pixels in the image.After the metal-affected projections are modified,the final image is reconstructed via the filtered backprojection algorithm.The feasibility of the proposed algorithm has been verified by real experimental data.

Reducing metal artifacts by restricting negative pixels

When the object contains metals,its x-ray computed tomography(CT)images are normally affected by streaking artifacts.These artifacts are mainly caused by the x-ray beam hardening effects,which deviate the measurements from their true values.One interesting observation of the metal artifacts is that certain regions of the metal artifacts often appear as negative pixel values.Our novel idea in this paper is to set up an objective function that restricts the negative pixel values in the image.We must point out that the naïve idea of setting the negative pixel values in the reconstructed image to zero does not give the same result.This paper proposes an iterative algorithm to optimize this objective function,and the unknowns are the metal affected projections.Once the metal affected projections are estimated,the filtered backprojection algorithm is used to reconstruct the final image.This paper applies the proposed algorithm to some airport bag CT scans.The bags all contain unknown metallic objects.The metal artifacts are effectively reduced by the proposed algorithm.

MAP based blocking artifact reduction for DCT domain distributed video coding

This paper proposes a maximum a posteriori （MAP） based blocking artifact reduction algorithm for discrete cosine transform （DCT） domain distributed video coding, in which the SI and the initial reconstructed Wyner-Ziv （WZ） frame are utilized to further estimate the original WZ frame. Though the MAP estimate improves quality of the artifact region, it also leads to over-smoothness and decreases quality of the non-artifact region. To overcome this problem, a criterion is presented to discriminate the artifact and the non-artifact region in the initial reconstructed WZ frame, and only the artifact region is updated with the MAP estimate. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm provides obvious improvement in terms of both objective and subjective evaluations.

Projection-domain iteration to estimate unreliable measurements

Due to the beam-hardening effect of the broad energy spectrum of the X-ray source in computed tomography,the reconstructed images usually suffer from severe artifacts when metallic objects are being imaged.Metal artifact correction methods are usually sophisticated and not practical,especially in some non-medical applications,in which the linear attenuation coefficients are unknown.This paper suggests a simple and effective algorithm to estimate the unreliable measurements.The proposed algorithm is an iterative algorithm,in which the iteration is performed in the projection domain,while the objective function is set up in the image domain.The final image is reconstructed with the conventional filtered backprojection algorithm.The feasibility of the proposed method is verified with airport bags that contain some unknown metals.

TOWARDS BEAM HARDENING CORRECTION FOR POLYCHROMATIC X-RAY CT＊

High-attenuation object-induced streaking and shadow artifacts in computerized to- mography （CT） are somewhat connected to the misfit of the X-ray projection data to the range space of the Radon transform. This misfit is mainly due to the beam hardening factor of the projection data which is unavoidable for polychromatic sources. The major difficulty in dealing with the beam hardening-induced streaking and shadow artifacts comes from its highly nonlinear nature depending on geometries of high attenuation objects. In this work, we investigate the mathematical characteristics of those streaking and shadow artifacts from the structure of the projection data. We also proposed a metal artifacts reduction method by incorporating the recent technique of the nonlinear beam-hardening corrector. Numerical simulations show that the proposed method effectively alleviates the streaking artifacts without changing the background images.