Window-Level Is a Strong Denoising Surrogate

Ayaan Haque, Adam Wang, Abdullah Al Zubaer Imran

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

CT image quality is heavily reliant on radiation dose, which causes a trade-off between radiation dose and image quality that affects the subsequent image-based diagnostic performance. However, high radiation can be harmful to both patients and operators. Several (deep learning-based) approaches have been attempted to denoise low dose images. However, those approaches require access to large training sets, specifically the full dose CT images for reference, which can often be difficult to obtain. Self-supervised learning is an emerging alternative for lowering the reference data requirement facilitating unsupervised learning. Currently available self-supervised CT denoising works are either dependent on foreign domains or pretexts that are not very task-relevant. To tackle the aforementioned challenges, we propose a novel self-supervised learning approach, namely Self-Supervised Window-Leveling for Image DeNoising (SSWL-IDN), leveraging an innovative, task-relevant, simple, yet effective surrogate—prediction of the window-leveled equivalent. SSWL-IDN leverages residual learning and a hybrid loss combining perceptual loss and MSE, all incorporated in a VAE framework. Our extensive (in- and cross-domain) experimentation demonstrates the effectiveness of SSWL-IDN in aggressive denoising of CT (abdomen and chest) images acquired at 5% dose level only (Code available at https://github.com/ayaanzhaque/SSWL-IDN ).

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationMachine Learning in Medical Imaging - 12th International Workshop, MLMI 2021, Held in Conjunction with MICCAI 2021, Proceedings
EditorsChunfeng Lian, Xiaohuan Cao, Islem Rekik, Xuanang Xu, Pingkun Yan
Pages457-466
Number of pages10
DOIs
StatePublished - 2021
Event12th International Workshop on Machine Learning in Medical Imaging, MLMI 2021, held in conjunction with 24th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2021 - Virtual, Online
Duration: Sep 27 2021Sep 27 2021

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume12966 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference12th International Workshop on Machine Learning in Medical Imaging, MLMI 2021, held in conjunction with 24th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention, MICCAI 2021
CityVirtual, Online
Period9/27/219/27/21

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Keywords

  • Computed tomography
  • Image denoising
  • Self-supervised learning
  • VAEs
  • Window-leveling

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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