Journal of Isfahan Medical School

Journal of Isfahan Medical School

Comparison of Different Denoising Filters in Myocardial Perfusion Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) Images

Document Type : Original Article(s)

Authors
Abdurrahim Rahimian 1
Mahnaz Etehadtavakol 2
Masoud Moslehi 3
1 MSc Student, Department of Medical Physics, School of Medicine, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran
2 Assistant Professor, Department of Medical Physics, School of Medicine, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran
3 Associate Professor, Department of Medical Physics, School of Medicine, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran
10.48305/jims.v40.i683.0624
Abstract
Background: Single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) imaging is widely implemented in nuclear medicine for detecting coronary artery diseases. To increase the accuracy of the diagnosis, it is necessary to improve the quality of the SPECT images that can be degraded by noise. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of using different filters such as Butterworth, Gaussian, Wiener with kernel sizes 3×3 and 5×5, and Median Modified Wiener Filters (MMWF with kernel sizes 3×3 and 5×5 to improve the quality of myocardial perfusion SPECT images with 99mTc-MIBI.
Methods: A Siemens Symbia T2 dual head SPECT/CT scanner equipped with a low-energy and high-resolution collimator (LEHR) was used for collecting data for this cross-sectional-applied study. The noise ratio (SNR), peak to noise ratio (PSNR) and contrast to noise ratio (CNR) were the indices used to asses the quality of the myocardial perfusion SPECT images of 30 patients after the filters mentioned above have been applied to the images.
Findings: Wiener filter with kernel size of 5×5 4.90 ± 0.69 and 2.65 ± 0.57 were found be the highest SNR and CNR indices respectively. However, it had the lowest PSNR in the range of 29.93 ± 3.13 (dB). In addition, the highest PSNR values were associated with the Gaussian filter as 50.09 ± 10.63 (dB).
Conclusion: The results of this study show that the wiener filter of kernel size of 5×5 outperformed the others to improve the quality of myocardial perfusion SPECT images used in this study.
Keywords
SPECT
Nuclear Medicine
Image Enhancement
  1. Azizian M, Etehadtavakol M, Khanbabapour S, Baradaran A, Baradaran M, Shanei A. Classification of prostate cancerous tissues by support vector machine algorithm with different kernels from T2-weighted magnetic resonance images [in Persian]. J Isfahan Med Sch 2021; 38(602): 893-9.
  2. Slomka PJ, Miller RJH, Hu LH, Germano G, Berman DS. Solid-state detector SPECT myocardial perfusion imaging. J Nucl Med 2019; 60(9): 1194-204.
  3. Cherry S, Sorenson J, Phelps M. Physics in nuclear medicine. 4th Philadelphia, PA: ‎Saunders; 2012.
  4. Goyal B, Dogra A, Agrawal S, Sohi BS. Noise issues prevailing in various types of medical images. Biomed Pharmacol J 2018; 11(3): 1227-37.
  5. Salihin Yusoff MN, Zakaria A. Determination of the optimum filter for qualitative and quantitative 99mTc myocardial SPECT imaging. Iran J Radiat Res 2009; 6(4): 173-81.
  6. Masoomi MA, Al-Shammeri I, Kalafallah K, Elrahman HMA, Ragab O, Ahmed E, et al. Wiener filter improves diagnostic accuracy of CAD SPECT images-comparison to angiography and CT angiography. Medicine (Baltimore) 2019; 98(4): e14207.
  7. Sayed IS, Ismail SS. Comparison of Low-Pass Filters for SPECT Imaging. Int J Biomed Imaging 2020; 2020: 9239753.
  8. Park CR, Kang SH, Lee Y. Median modified wiener filter for improving the image quality of gamma camera images. Nucl Eng Technol 2020; 52(10): 2328-33.
  9. Kim ES, Lee Y, Park CR. Feasibility of MMWF noise reduction algorithm in brain SPECT images according to various reconstruction methods: A
    phantom study. Optik 2021; 247.
  10. Khalil MM, Tremoleda JL, Bayomy TB, Gsell W. Molecular SPECT imaging: An overview. Int J Mol Imaging 2011; 2011: 796025.
  11. Gonzalez RC, Woods RE, Eddins SL. Digital image processing using Matlab. New York, NY: Pearson Education; 2004.
  12. Kulkarni P, Madathil D. A review on echocardiographic image speckle reduction filters. Biomed Res 2018; 29(12): 2582-9.
  13. -modified Wiener filter provides efficient denoising, preserving spot edge and morphology in 2-DE image processing. Proteomics 2009; 9(21): 4908-19.
  14. Lee S, Cho H, Lee Y. High-energy industrial 2D X-ray imaging system with effective nonlocal means denoising for nondestructive testing. Nucl Instruments Methods Phys Res Sect A Accel Spectrometers, Detect Assoc Equip 2019; 925: 212-6.
  15. Kim K, Lee Y. Effects of total variation regularization noise reduction algorithm in improved K-edge log-subtraction X-ray images with photon-counting cadmium telluride detectors. Optik
    2020; 206.
  16. Hore A, Ziou D. Image quality metrics: PSNR vs. SSIM. [Online]. [cited 2010]. Avilable from: URL: https://projet.liris.cnrs.fr/imagine/pub/proceedings/ICPR-2010/data/4109c366.pdf
  17. Vandenberghe S, D’Asseler Y, van De Walle R, Kauppinen T, Koole M, Bouwens L, et al. Iterative reconstruction algorithms in nuclear medicine. Comput Med Imaging Graph 2001; 25(2): 105-11.
  18. Heller GV, Hendel RC. Nuclear cardiology: Practical applications. 2nd New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education / Medical; 2009.
Journal of Isfahan Medical School
Volume 40, Issue 683
3rd Week, October
Autumn 2022
Pages 624-631