title: An unbiased signal-to-noise ratio measure for magnetic resonance images.
abstract: Estimating the true signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of magnetic resonance (MR) images with low signal is confounded by the magnitude presentation of the data. This paper suggests a simple solution to this problem. A common method of measuring SNR compares the mean signal to the standard deviation of the noise. This SNR measure was found to be satisfactory for high but not low signal-to-noise image regions because of noise bias. These inconsistencies are removed by introducing unbiased definitions of the signal and noise levels in terms of their root-mean-square values. The approaches are compared by evaluating the SNR values for MR medical images.
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: McGibney
authors.forename: M R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Smith
mesh_terms: D001699:Biometry; D055592:Biophysical Phenomena; D001703:Biophysics; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data