A comprehensive study of a similarity criterion in cardiac computerized tomography images enhancement

Abstract

This research focuses on the study of a particular filter based on a similarity criterion that has been applied to improve the information contained in images acquired using different cardiac imaging modalities. The primary attention of this study is to examine which component of the similarity criterion generates more relevant information useful to increase the medical image quality. In this sense, four case studies are established, first a complete formulation of the similarity criterion is considered, and then three additional cases, representing each component of the criterion; such cases are referred to as full, main, residual1, and residual2, respectively. A score function is used for quantifying and then assessing the impact of each component of the similarity criterion. Such measure is a relation between some full-reference and blind-reference image enhancement measures. A computer generated phantom and a representative clinical dataset (1,270 three-dimensional images from 126 patients) are used in a thorough evaluation of the similarity criterion. In general terms of performance of the image enhancement technique, the results of the study reveal that the component residual1 outperforms than the other two components of similarity criterion or its complete formulation.