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Reduction of noise in diffusion tensor images using anisotropic smoothing
Author(s) -
Ding Zhaohua,
Gore John C.,
Anderson Adam W.
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
magnetic resonance in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.696
H-Index - 225
eISSN - 1522-2594
pISSN - 0740-3194
DOI - 10.1002/mrm.20339
Subject(s) - smoothing , anisotropic diffusion , diffusion mri , structure tensor , tensor (intrinsic definition) , anisotropy , noise (video) , isotropy , noise reduction , diffusion , edge preserving smoothing , fractional anisotropy , computer science , physics , mathematics , optics , artificial intelligence , computer vision , geometry , image (mathematics) , magnetic resonance imaging , radiology , medicine , thermodynamics
To improve the accuracy of tissue structural and architectural characterization with diffusion tensor imaging, a novel smoothing technique is developed for reducing noise in diffusion tensor images. The technique extends the traditional anisotropic diffusion filtering method by allowing isotropic smoothing within homogeneous regions and anisotropic smoothing along structure boundaries. This is particularly useful for smoothing diffusion tensor images in which direction information contained in the tensor needs to be restored following noise corruption and preserved around tissue boundaries. The effectiveness of this technique is quantitatively studied with experiments on simulated and human in vivo diffusion tensor data. Illustrative results demonstrate that the anisotropic smoothing technique developed can significantly reduce the impact of noise on the direction as well as anisotropy measures of the diffusion tensor images. Magn Reson Med 53:485–490, 2005. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.