Reduction of Noise in Medical Imaging Quality

Abstract

When it comes to diagnosing patients’ illnesses, digital image modalities like X-ray, Ultrasound (US), Computer Tomography (CT), Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), etc. play an essential part. Noise is a common problem in the pictures produced by these modalities, reducing image quality. An important factor in making correct diagnosis of illness is the quality of the medical pictures used. Poisson noise is a prevalent problem in X-ray pictures. Hairline fractures inside bones, chest coughs, and other similar conditions become more difficult to diagnose when this noise is present. These sounds need to be eliminated from the X-ray picture before it may be improved. In this study, we aimed to establish a method for effectively denoising X-ray pictures, hence reducing the amount of Poisson noise present in them. The suggested filter makes use of the Absolute Difference and Mean Filter (ADMF) to replace the processed pixel with the mean of its nearest neighbors within a 5x5 frame when the absolute difference between them is minimal. Using 75 X-rays of teeth from the Digital Dental X-ray Database, the proposed technique is compared to the state-of-the-art Region Classification and Response Median Filtering (RCRMF) method. Filter performance is measured by Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Mean Square Error (MSE) scores; the suggested approach improves PSNR by 5.41 percentage points and reduces MSE by 33.44 percentage points.