Xie Huidong, Liu Qiong, Zhou Bo, Chen Xiongchao, Guo Xueqi, Wang Hanzhong, Li Biao, Rominger Axel, Shi Kuangyu, Liu Chi
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Yale University.
Department of Nuclear Medicine, Ruijin Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine.
IEEE Trans Radiat Plasma Med Sci. 2024 Apr;8(4):366-378. doi: 10.1109/trpms.2023.3334105. Epub 2023 Nov 20.
As PET imaging is accompanied by substantial radiation exposure and cancer risk, reducing radiation dose in PET scans is an important topic. However, low-count PET scans often suffer from high image noise, which can negatively impact image quality and diagnostic performance. Recent advances in deep learning have shown great potential for recovering underlying signal from noisy counterparts. However, neural networks trained on a specific noise level cannot be easily generalized to other noise levels due to different noise amplitude and variances. To obtain optimal denoised results, we may need to train multiple networks using data with different noise levels. But this approach may be infeasible in reality due to limited data availability. Denoising dynamic PET images presents additional challenge due to tracer decay and continuously changing noise levels across dynamic frames. To address these issues, we propose a Unified Noise-aware Network (UNN) that combines multiple sub-networks with varying denoising power to generate optimal denoised results regardless of the input noise levels. Evaluated using large-scale data from two medical centers with different vendors, presented results showed that the UNN can consistently produce promising denoised results regardless of input noise levels, and demonstrate superior performance over networks trained on single noise level data, especially for extremely low-count data.
由于正电子发射断层扫描(PET)成像伴随着大量的辐射暴露和癌症风险,降低PET扫描中的辐射剂量是一个重要课题。然而,低计数PET扫描常常存在高图像噪声问题,这会对图像质量和诊断性能产生负面影响。深度学习的最新进展已显示出从噪声图像中恢复潜在信号的巨大潜力。然而,由于噪声幅度和方差不同,在特定噪声水平上训练的神经网络不易推广到其他噪声水平。为了获得最佳的去噪结果,我们可能需要使用具有不同噪声水平的数据训练多个网络。但由于数据可用性有限,这种方法在实际中可能不可行。由于示踪剂衰变以及动态帧之间不断变化的噪声水平,对动态PET图像进行去噪带来了额外的挑战。为了解决这些问题,我们提出了一种统一噪声感知网络(UNN),该网络结合了多个具有不同去噪能力的子网络,以生成最佳的去噪结果,而不管输入噪声水平如何。使用来自两个不同供应商的医疗中心的大规模数据进行评估,结果表明,无论输入噪声水平如何,UNN都能始终如一地产生有前景的去噪结果,并且相对于在单噪声水平数据上训练的网络表现出卓越的性能,尤其是对于极低计数的数据。