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Portrait of Anders Tingberg. Photo

Anders Tingberg

Associate professor

Portrait of Anders Tingberg. Photo

What is worse: Decreased spatial resolution or increased noise?

Author

  • Anders Tingberg
  • C Herrmann
  • Jack Besjakov
  • A Almén
  • P Sund
  • D Adliene
  • S Mattsson
  • L G Månsson
  • W Panzer

Summary, in English

Purpose: To investigate the relative importance of spatial resolution and noise on the image quality of clinical radiographs. Methods: The spatial resolution and noise of fifteen digitised lumbar spine radiographs were altered with image processing. Three different MTF curves and three different Wiener spectra were combined into seven different combinations of spatial resolution and noise. These seven combinations were applied to the original data set, and the resulting images were printed on film. Seven expert radiologists evaluated the clinical image quality of the resulting images with visual grading analysis (VGA) of structures based on the European Image Criteria. Results: The results show that added noise is more deteriorating than reduced spatial resolution for the clinical image quality. For a given MTF and noise level, the worst was the one with increased noise followed by the one with both reduced MTF and added noise (mimicking a faster screen-film combination). Reduced MTF only gave the highest rating. Conclusions: It is more important to find methods for removing noise than to try to improve the MTF of a radiographic system. A noisy image can sometimes be improved by reducing the spatial resolution.

Department/s

  • Medical Radiation Physics, Malmö
  • Department of Translational Medicine

Publishing year

2002

Language

English

Pages

338-346

Publication/Series

Proceedings of SPIE

Volume

4686

Document type

Conference paper

Publisher

SPIE

Topic

  • Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Medical Imaging

Conference name

Medical Imaging 2002: Image Perception, Observer Performance, and Technology Assessment

Conference date

2002-02-23

Conference place

San Diego, CA, United States

Status

Published

Research group

  • Medical Radiation Physics, Malmö

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISBN: 9780819444318