title: Investigation of basic imaging properties in digital radiography. 13. Effect of simple structured noise on the detectability of simulated stenotic lesions.
abstract: We investigated the effects of structured background noise on the detectability of stenotic lesions. Digital subtraction angiographic (DSA) images of stenotic blood vessels were simulated and superimposed onto uniform noise samples. Eighteen-alternative forced choice (18-AFC) experiments were employed to determine the detectability of the stenotic lesion in the structured-noise background of a blood vessel. In this study, the dependence of detectability on lesion size, vessel size, and incident x-ray exposure was examined. Our results indicate that the presence of structured noise in an image will reduce the detectability of a lesion. However, the relative performance of an observer when the lesion size and incident exposure were varied was the same with and without the presence of the structured background. Thus, conclusions obtained previously with regard to changes in the detectability of a lesion in the presence of uniform background noise can be applied directly to conditions in which simple structured anatomic background is present.
authors.affiliation: Kurt Rossmann Laboratories for Radiologic Image Research, Department of Radiology, University of Chicago, Illinois 60637.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ohara
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Doi
authors.forename: C E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Metz
authors.forename: M L
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Giger
mesh_terms: D000792:Angiography; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003251:Constriction, Pathologic / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging; D006801:Humans; D008954:Models, Biological; D011856:Radiographic Image Enhancement; D013382:Subtraction Technique; D014652:Vascular Diseases / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*