The registration of MR images using multiscale robust methods

Acquisition of MR images involves their registration against some prechosen reference image. Motion artifacts and misregistration can seriously flaw their interpretation and analysis. This article provides a global registration method that is robust in the presence of noise and local distortions between pairs of images. It uses a two-stage approach, comprising an optional Fourier phase-matching method to carry out preregistration, followed by an iterative procedure. The iterative stage uses a prescribed set of registration points, defined on the reference image, at which a robust nonlinear regression is computed from the squared residuals at these points. The method can readily accommodate general linear, or even nonlinear, registration transformations on the images. The algorithm was tested by recovering the registration transformation parameters when a 256 × 256 pixel T₂¹-weighted human brain image was scaled, rotated, and translated by prescribed amounts, and to which different amounts of Gaussian noise had been added. The results show subpixel accuracy of recovery when no noise is present, and graceful degradation of accuracy as noise is added. When 40% noise is added to images undergoing small shifts, the recovery errors are less than 3 pixels. The same tests applied to the Woods algorithm gave slightly inferior accuracy for these images, but failed to converge to the correct parameters in some cases of large-scale-shifted images with 10% added noise.     

基于多引导滤波的图像增强算法

图像增强技术可以有效地突出图像中的有用信息,已广泛应用于多个领域.现有的图像增强算法往往无法应对自然图像中复杂的梯度分布,难以准确保持图像中前景与背景的边缘信息.为了改善输出图像的边界过平滑问题,本文提出了一个基于多引导滤波的图像增强算法.首先,设计了一个以滤波核为变量的通用图像优化模型,现有的联合滤波器可视为该模型的解;然后,依据集成学习的思想,将联合滤波器中的单幅引导图像扩展到多幅,以更好地利用引导图中的结构信息进而获得更好的输出结果,并给出了一个多幅引导图的来源途径;最后,对多幅输出图像进行平滑,在图像优化模型中加入正则化项,以确保由多引导滤波得到的不同滤波输出保持一致.实验结果表明,本文算法在抑制图像噪声的同时,可以更好地保留物体的边界信息,从而使图像的信噪比进一步提升.     

Euclidian distance-weighted smoothing for quantitative MRI: application to intervoxel anisotropy index mapping with DTI

During the computation of intervoxel anisotropy features, the inclusion of both eigenvalues and eigenvectors reduces the effect of noise, but spatial averaging blurs the resulting maps. We propose a new adaptive technique that uses data-dependent weights in the averaging process so that the influence of each neighbor in the local window is proportional to the similarity of characteristics of the neighbor considered to those of the reference central voxel. This likeness criterion is based on the multidimensional Euclidian distance using the entire available multispectral information contained in the diffusion-weighted images. This solution is controlled by a single parameter beta that results from a compromise between edge-preserving and noise-smoothing abilities. This Euclidian distance-weighted technique is a generic solution for filtering noise during parametric reconstruction. It was applied to map anisotropy using an intervoxel lattice index (LI) from experimental images of mouse brain in vivo and achieves noise reduction without distorting small anatomical structures. We also show how to employ in the discrimination scheme the images not used in the estimation of the considered feature.     

Motion deblurring using edge map with blurred/noisy image pairs

Motion deblurring methods using blurred/noisy image pairs usually include denoising process of the noisy image. Because both remaining noise and distorted fine details in the denoised image cause an error on deblurring, we propose an algorithm using an edge map of the noisy image to retain sharp edge information while neglecting noise in any smooth region that does not contain information about the motion that occurred during the exposure. In addition, the blur kernel is efficiently estimated by employing the fast total variation regularization method for the gradients of blurred and noisy images only on edge regions. For latent image restoration, another fidelity term is added, which compares the gradients of the noisy and estimated latent images on edge regions to preserve the fine details of the noisy image. To model a sparse distribution of real-world image gradients, a deconvolution method imposing hyper-Laplacian priors based on an alternating minimization scheme is also derived to restore a latent image efficiently. Experimental results show that the peak signal-to-noise ratios of the restored images against the original latent images have been increased by 11.1% on average, when compared to the existing algorithms using an image pair.     

X射线法测量的ICF靶丸参数的图像分析

 在ICF靶丸参数测量中，采用接触X射线显微辐射照相法获得靶核的X射线吸收底片图像，将该底片放置于显微镜下并用CCD获得了数字化图像。基于该数字化图像信息，编写了一套完整的计算机算法来计算靶参数。采用辐向平均法标定出靶中心，采用图像强度函数对半径的二阶微分来确定出靶层分界位置，计算精度约为0.2pixels。     

利用相邻相关像素进行噪音抑制的模糊小目标检测算法

提出了一种利用相邻相关像素对红外数字图像中的可疑小目标进行检测的算法.该算法首先利用自适应全局阈值检测图像中的亮像素,并借助相邻相关像素信息滤除结果中的亮噪音点;然后依据亮像素的相关性,对剩余的亮像素进行加强,并再次抑制噪音,获得可观的信噪比增益.相对于传统的Top-Hat变换,该算法能够在有效提高待检测目标信号强度的同时很好地抑制噪音,有效地保留了目标图像的边缘细节.     

利用相邻相关像素进行噪音抑制的模糊小目标检测算法

提出了一种利用相邻相关像素对红外数字图像中的可疑小目标进行检测的算法. 该算法首先利用自适应全局阈值检测图像中的亮像素,并借助相邻相关像素信息滤除结果中的亮噪音点;然后依据亮像素的相关性,对剩余的亮像素进行加强,并再次抑制噪音,获得可观的信噪比增益.相对于传统的Top-Hat变换,该算法能够在有效提高待检测目标信号强度的同时很好地抑制噪音,有效地保留了目标图像的边缘细节.     

Infrared target tracking in multiple feature pseudo-color image with kernel density estimation

Tracking targets in infrared images is a challenging subject due to the low contrast and severe noise. Kernel density estimation (KDE) with robust performance is one of the well-known tracking algorithms. In essence, tracking targets with KDE algorithm is tracking the statistical features of their pixels by the histograms. The universal KDE which can track any features of targets has not been developed. We propose a strategy which does not need to improve on the KDE algorithm itself, but it can make KDE track other features. We first map the features into the pixel intensity and create the feature images. Then these feature images are used to construct the multiple feature pseudo-color images (MFPCIs). The kernel density estimation algorithm tracks targets in MFPCIs can indirectly track these features. Experiments validate that the performance of tracking targets in MFPCIs outperforms that of tracking them in the original infrared images.     

基于多特征差异检测与联合控制映射的红外图像选择加密算法

为了实现对红外图像的选择性加密,提出了基于多特征差异检测与联合控制映射的红外图像选择算法。引入分段正弦变换,将输出图像分割为3个不同的区域,对每个区域完成不同的拉伸变换,完成初始红外图像的增强,凸显真实红外目标;再利用增强图像中目标与背景的灰度差异,从而设计目标决策因子,并分割Top-Hat变换的结构元素,构建红外背景抑制机制,过滤杂波与噪声;利用灰度水平、对比度与相似度,建立多特征差异检测模型,提取包含真实目标与可疑目标的感兴趣区域;以Logistic映射为控制条件,综合Tent映射与Chebyshev映射,设计联合控制混沌映射,利用其输出的混合随机序列对感兴趣区域进行置乱;引入引力模型,对混淆的感兴趣区域内的像素进行扩散,完成红外目标选择加密。实验结果显示:与已有的图像局部加密机制相比,该文算法输出密文信息熵值达到了7.982 6,能够更好地用于红外图像局部选择性加密。     

Measurement of regional cerebral glucose uptake by magnetic resonance spin-lock imaging

Purpose

The regional uptake of glucose in rat brain in vivo was measured at high resolution using spin-lock magnetic resonance imaging after infusion of the glucose analogue 2-deoxy-d-glucose (2DG). Previous studies of glucose metabolism have used ¹³C-labeled 2DG and NMR spectroscopy, ¹⁸F-labeled fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) and PET, or chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) MRI, all of which have practical limitations. Our goal was to explore the ability of spin-lock sequences to detect specific chemically-exchanging species in vivo and to compare the effects of 2DG in brain tissue on CEST images.

Methods

Numerical simulations of R_1p and CEST contrasts for a variety of sample parameters were performed to evaluate the potential specificity of each method for detecting the exchange contributions of 2DG. Experimental measurements were made in tissue phantoms and in rat brain in vivo which demonstrated the ability of spin-lock sequences for detecting 2DG.

Results

R_1p contrast acquired with appropriate spin-lock sequences can isolate the contribution of exchanging protons in 2DG in vivo and appears to have better sensitivity and more specificity to 2DG–water exchange effects than CEST.

Conclusion

Spin-lock imaging provides a novel approach to the detection and measurement of glucose uptake in brain in vivo.     

Decision-based adaptive morphological filter for fixed-value impulse noise removal

A novel adaptive switching morphological filter for removing fixed-value impulse noise is proposed. The proposed filter firstly identifies noise pixels using the two-stage morphological noise detector, in which the initial noise detection is used to identify the noise candidates based on the morphological gradients and the refined noise detection based on the combined conditional morphological operators is adopted to further classify the noise candidates as the noise pixels or noise-free pixels. Then the detected noise pixels are removed by the adaptive morphological filter using the conditional rank-order morphological operators while the noise-free pixels are left unaltered. Extensive simulations show that the proposed filter outperforms a number of existing switching-based filters because of its excellent performance in terms of noise detection and image restoration.     

MRI denoising using progressively distribution-based neural network

Magnetic Resonance (MR) images often suffer from noise pollution during image acquisition and transmission, which limits the accuracy of quantitative measurements from the data. Noise in magnitude MR images is usually governed by Rician distribution, due to the existence of uncorrelated Gaussian noise with zero-mean and equal variance in both the real and imaginary parts of the complex K-space data. Different from the existing MRI denoising methods that utilizing the spatial neighbor information around the pixels or patches, this work turns to capture the pixel-level distribution information by means of supervised network learning. A progressive network learning strategy is proposed via fitting the distribution of pixel-level and feature-level intensities. The proposed network consists of two residual blocks, one is used for fitting pixel domain without batch normalization layer and another one is applied for matching feature domain with batch normalization layer. Experimental results under synthetic, complex-valued and clinical MR brain images demonstrate great potential of the proposed network with substantially improved quantitative measures and visual inspections.     

An anisotropic images segmentation and bias correction method

Intensity inhomogeneities cause considerable difficulty in the quantitative analysis of magnetic resonance (MR) images. Thus, bias field correction is a necessary step before quantitative analysis of MR data can be undertaken. This paper presents an anisotropic approach to bias correction and segmentation for images with intensity inhomogeneities and noise. Intensity-based methods are usually applied to estimate the bias field; however, most of them only concern the intensity information. When the images have noise or slender topological objects, these methods cannot obtain accurate results or bias fields. We use structure information to construct an anisotropic Gibbs field and combine the anisotropic Gibbs field with the Bayesian framework to segment images while estimating the bias fields. Our method is able to capture bias of quite general profiles. Moreover, it is robust to noise and slender topological objects. The proposed method has been used for images of various modalities with promising results.     

Phase-aligned multiple spin-echo averaging: a simple way to improve signal-to-noise ratio of in vivo mouse spinal cord diffusion tensor image

Purpose

To improve signal-noise-ratio of in vivo mouse spinal cord diffusion tensor imaging using-phase aligned multiple spin-echo technique.

Material and methods

In vivo mouse spinal cord diffusion tensor imaging maps generated by multiple spin-echo and conventional spin-echo diffusion weighting were examined to demonstrate the efficacy of multiple spin-echo diffusion sequence to improve image quality and throughput. Effects of signal averaging using complex, magnitude and phased images from multiple spin-echo diffusion weighting were also assessed. Bayesian probability theory was used to generate phased images by moving the coherent signals to the real channel to eliminate the effect of phase variation between echoes while preserving the Gaussian noise distribution. Signal averaging of phased multiple spin-echo images potentially solves both the phase incoherence problem and the bias of the elevated Rician noise distribution in magnitude image. The proposed signal averaging with Bayesian phase-aligned multiple spin-echo images approach was compared to the conventional spin-echo data acquired with doubling the scan time. The diffusion tensor imaging parameters were compared in the mouse contusion spinal cord injury. Significance level (p-value) and effect size (Cohen’s d) were reported between the control and contused spinal cord to inspect the sensitivity of each approach in detecting white matter pathology.

Results

Compared to the spin-echo image, the signal-noise-ratio increased to 1.84-fold using the phased image averaging and to 1.30-fold using magnitude image averaging in the spinal cord white matter. Multiple spin-echo phased image averaging showed improved image quality of the mouse spinal cord among the tested methods. Diffusion tensor imaging metrics obtained from multiple spin-echo phased images using three echoes and two averages closely agreed with those derived by spin-echo magnitude data with four averages (two times more in acquisition time). The phased image averaging correctly reflected pathological features in contusion spinal cord injury.

Conclusion

Our in vivo imaging results indicate that averaging the phased multiple spin-echo images yields an 84% signal-noise-ratio increase over the spin-echo images and a 41% gain over the magnitude averaged multiple spin-echo images with equal acquisition time. Current results from the animal model of spinal cord injury suggest that the phased multiple spin-echo images could be used to improve signal-noise-ratio.     

Multifocus image fusion and denoising scheme based on homogeneity similarity

A novel image fusion algorithm based on homogeneity similarity is proposed in this paper, aiming at solving the fusion problem of clean and noisy multifocus images. Firstly, the initial fused image is acquired with one multiresolution image fusion method. The pixels of the source images, which are similar to the corresponding initial fused image pixels, are considered to be located in the sharply focused regions. By this method, the initial focused regions are determined. In order to improve the fusion performance, morphological opening and closing are employed for post-processing. Secondly, the homogeneity similarity is introduced and used to fuse the clean and noisy multifocus images. Finally, the fused image is obtained by weighting the neighborhood pixels of the point of source images which are located at the focused region. Experimental results demonstrate that, for the clean multifocus image fusion, the proposed method performs better than some popular image fusion methods in both subjective and objective qualities. Furthermore, it can simultaneously resolve the image restoration and fusion problem when the source multifocus images are corrupted by the Gaussian white noise, and can also provide better performance than the conventional methods.     

MAP序列多帧图像超分辨率复原

序列多帧图像的超分辨率复原是由一序列低分辨率图像来估计一幅高分辨率图像的技术。介绍了序列图像的成像观测模型,给出了一种随机微扫描亚像素运动估计的方法,采用最大后验概率法进行了图像的超分辨率复原,对仿真结果进行了分析和比较。     

超微弱生物发光图像中的统计检验

应用光电阴极探测灵敏度为０．５ｃｐｓ／ｍｍ＾２的超高灵敏度的光电成像系统，获得了绿豆芽和活体昆明鼠的超微弱生物发光图像，并用统计理论研究了极弱光强条件下光子图像的信号检测和问题，文中在信号和噪声均为泊松分布的条件下，分析了从光子噪声中检验是否有信号的判据以及影响到检验的５个因素对检验结论的影响，以此判据成功地检验到实验获得的昆明鼠发光光子图像中的信号。     

Noise reduction in multiple-echo data sets using singular value decomposition

A method is described for denoising multiple-echo data sets using singular value decomposition (SVD). Images are acquired using a multiple gradient- or spin-echo sequence, and the variation of the signal with echo time (TE) in all pixels is subjected to SVD analysis to determine the components of the signal variation. The least significant components are associated with small singular values and tend to characterize the noise variation. Applying a "minimum variance" filter to the singular values suppresses the noise components in a way that optimally approximates the underlying noise-free images. The result is a reduction in noise in the individual TE images with minimal degradation of the spatial resolution and contrast. Phantom and in vivo results are presented.     

Thresholding in correlation analyses of magnetic resonance functional neuroimaging

The definition of objective and effective thresholds in MRI of human brain function is a crucial step in the analysis of paradigm-related activations. This paper introduces a user-independent and robust procedure that calculates statistical parametric maps based on correlation coefficients. Thresholds are introduced as p values and defined with respect to the physiologic noise distribution of the individual maps. Experimental examples from the human visual and motor system rely on dynamic acquisitions of gradient-echo echo-planar images (2.0 T, TR = 2000 ms, 96 × 128 matrix) with blood oxygenation level-dependent contrast. The results demonstrate the disadvantages of thresholding with fixed correlation coefficients. In contrast, taking the individual noise into account allows for a derivation of p values and a reliable identification of highly significant activation centers. An adequate delineation of the spatial extent of activation may be achieved by adding directly neighboring pixels provided their correlation coefficients comply with a second lower p value threshold.     

光谱谐波分析的新型HAC非监督分类器

高光谱影像分类是识别影像信息的重要途径之一,研究其算法对地物识别、动态变化监测和专题信息提取等方面具有重要意义。非监督分类由于其具有无须先验知识的特点,被广泛应用于高光谱影像分类。结合谐波分析理论提出一种新的高光谱影像非监督分类算法,即谐波分析分类器(harmonic analysis classifier,HAC)。首先,该算法统计第一谐波分量并绘制其直方图,根据波峰数目及位置确定初始地物类别和聚类中心像元。然后将待分类像元光谱的波形信息映射到谐波分解次数、振幅和相位的特征空间中,利用同类地物在特征空间中表现聚集性这一特征,根据最小距离原则对待分类像元进行归类。最后,计算聚类中心像元间的欧式距离,通过设置距离阈值完成类间合并,从而达到高光谱影像分类的目的。提取两种地物类别的光谱曲线,经谐波分析后得到谐波分解次数、振幅和相位量,并分析其在特征空间中的分布情况验证了HAC算法的正确性。同时将HAC算法应用到EO-1卫星的Hyperion高光谱影像得到其分类结果,通过对比K-MEANS,ISODATA和HAC算法的高光谱影像分类结果,证实HAC算法作为一种非监督分类方法在高光谱影像分类方面具有较好的应用性。