Techniques to evaluate the quality of medical images

Abstract

There is not a perfect agree in the definition of medical image quality from the physician and physicist point of view. The present conference analyzes the standard techniques used to grade image quality. In the first place, an analysis about how viewing conditions related to environment, monitor used or physician experience determines the subjective evaluation is done. After that, the physics point of view is analyzed including the advantage and disadvantage of the main published methods like: Quality Control Tests, Mathematical metrics, Modulation Transfer Function, Noise Power Spectrum, System Response Curve and Mathematical observers. Each method is exemplified with the results of updated papers. We concluded that the most successful methods up to the present have been those which include simulations of the Human Visual System. They have good correlation between the results of the objective metrics and the subjective evaluation made by the observers.