Subject-Specific Patch-Based Denoising for Contrast-Enhanced Cardiac MR Images

摘要

Many patch-based techniques in imaging, e.g., Non-local means denoising, require tuning parameters to yield optimal results. In real-world applications, e.g., denoising of MR images, ground truth is not generally available and the process of choosing an appropriate set of parameters is a challenge. Recently, Zhu et al. proposed a method to define an image quality measure, called Q, that does not require ground truth. In this manuscript, we evaluate the effect of various parameters of the NL-means denoising on this quality metric Q. Our experiments are based on the late-gadolinium enhancement (LGE) cardiac MR images that are inherently noisy. Our described exhaustive evaluation approach can be used in tuning parameters of patch-based schemes. Even in the case that an estimation of optimal parameters is provided using another existing approach, our described method can be used as a secondary validation step. Our preliminary results suggest that denoising parameters should be case-specific rather than generic.