title: A new denoising method for dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI.
abstract: This paper presents a new algorithm for denoising dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) MR images. The algorithm is called Dynamic Non-Local Means and is a novel variation on the Non-Local Means (NL-Means) algorithm. It exploits the redundancy of information in the DCE-MRI sequence of images. An evaluation of the performance of the algorithm relative to six other denoising algorithms-Gaussian filtering, the original NL-Means algorithm, bilateral filtering, anisotropic diffusion filtering, the wavelets adaptive multiscale products threshold method, and the traditional wavelet thresholding method-is also presented. The evaluation was performed by two groups of expert observers-18 signal/image processing experts, and 9 clinicians (8 radiographers and 1 radiologist)-using real DCE-MRI data. The results of the evaluation provide evidence, at the alpha=0.05 level of significance, that both groups of observers deem the DNLM algorithm to perform visually better than all of the other algorithms.
authors.affiliation: School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Qld, Australia. ygal@itee.uq.edu.edu
authors.forename: Yaniv
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Gal
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mehnert
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bradley
authors.forename: Kerry
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: McMahon
authors.forename: Dominic
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kennedy
authors.forename: Stuart
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Crozier
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D016477:Artifacts; D003287:Contrast Media; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
chemical_list: D003287:Contrast Media