Toward a full-reference information-theoretic quality assessment method for x-ray images

Chrysi Papalazarou; Rudolph M. Snoeren; Frans M. J. Willems; Peter H. N. de With; Han Kroon; Peter Rongen

doi:10.1117/12.768207

18 March 2008 Toward a full-reference information-theoretic quality assessment method for x-ray images

Chrysi Papalazarou, Rudolph M. Snoeren, Frans M. J. Willems, Peter H. N. de With, Han Kroon, Peter Rongen

Proceedings Volume 6913, Medical Imaging 2008: Physics of Medical Imaging; 69130T (2008) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.768207
Event: Medical Imaging, 2008, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

This work aims at defining an information-theoretic quality assessment technique for cardiovascular X-ray images, using a full-reference scheme (relying on averaging a sequence to obtain a noiseless reference). With the growth of advanced signal processing in medical imaging, such an approach will enable objective comparisons of the quality of processed images. A concept for describing the quality of an image is to express it in terms of its information capacity. Shannon has derived this capacity for noisy channel coding. However, for X-ray images, the noise is signal-dependent and non-additive, so that Shannon's theorem is not directly applicable. To overcome this complication, we exploit the fact that any invertible mapping on a signal does not change its information content. We show that it is possible to transform the images in such a way that the Shannon theorem can be applied. A general method for calculating such a transformation is used, given a known relation between signal mean and noise standard deviation. After making the noise signal-independent, it is possible to assess the information content of an image and to calculate an overall quality metric (e.g. information capacity) which includes the effects of sharpness, contrast and noise. We have applied this method on phantom images under different acquisition conditions and computed the information capacity for those images. We aim to show that the results of this assessment are consistent with variations in noise, contrast and sharpness, introduced by system settings and image processing.

Citation Download Citation

Chrysi Papalazarou, Rudolph M. Snoeren, Frans M. J. Willems, Peter H. N. de With, Han Kroon, and Peter Rongen "Toward a full-reference information-theoretic quality assessment method for x-ray images", Proc. SPIE 6913, Medical Imaging 2008: Physics of Medical Imaging, 69130T (18 March 2008); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.768207

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