A WAVELET-BASED METHOD FOR REMOVAL OF OUT-OF-PLANE STRUCTURES IN DIGITAL TOMOSYNTHESIS

Reconstructed images in digital tomosynthesis (DTS) are affected by ar tifacts due to blur from planes other than the fulcrum plane. A wavele t-based method has been developed for the discrimination and subsequen t removal of unrelated structures from the reconstructed plane. The ap proach exploits both the specific pattern of noise in DTS and the spat ial locality of the wavelet transformation. The technique was implemen ted on a DTS clinical protoype system. Experimental evaluation on angi ographic types of images demonstrated excellent noise differentiation and elimination. The method is therefore particularly useful for certa in medical imaging applications such as vascular DTS imaging. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.