Real-Time Impulse Noise Removal from MR Images for Radiosurgery Applications

Background and objective: In the recent years image processing techniques are used as a tool to improve detection and diagnostic capabilities in the medical applications. Medical applications have been so much affected by these techniques which some of them are embedded in medical instruments such as MRI, CT and other medical devices. Among these techniques, medical image enhancement algorithms play an essential role in removal of the noise which can be produced by medical instruments and during image transfer. It has been proved that impulse noise is a major type of noise, which is produced during medical operations, such as MRI, CT, and angiography, by their image capturing devices. An embeddable hardware module which is able to denoise medical images before and during surgical operations could be very helpful. Methods: In this paper an accurate algorithm is proposed for real-time removal of impulse noise in medical images. All image blocks are divided into three categories of edge, smooth, and disordered areas. A different reconstruction method is applied to each category of blocks for the purpose of noise removal. Results: The proposed method is tested on MR images. Simulation results show acceptable denoising accuracy for various levels of noise. Also an FPAG implementation of our denoising algorithm shows acceptable hardware resource utilization. Hence, the algorithm is suitable for embedding in medical hardware instruments such as radiosurgery devices.