Signal-to-Noise Enhancement in Imaging Applications Using a Time-Series of Images

Description:

The invention offered for licensing relates to the field of imaging and specifically to the field of medical imaging. The apparatus and method of the invention provide for noise reduction in imaging applications that use a time-series of images. In one embodiment of the invention, a time-series of images is acquired using a same imaging protocol of the same subject area, but the images are spaced in time by one or more time intervals (e.g. 1, 2, 3 …seconds apart). A sub-region is projected across all of the images to perform a localized analysis (corresponding X-Y pixels or X-Y-Z voxels are analyzed across all images) that identifies temporal components within each sub-region. Subsequently, within the sub-regions, only those temporal components are selected whose amplitude is above a predetermined amplitude threshold. The images are then reconstructed using the sub-regions with reduced components. A maximal-intensity-projection (MIP) is applied in the temporal domain (tMIP) in order to obtain a single image with reduced noise (this can be done either at the sub-region level or at the reconstructed image level). The technology can be applied to a broad spectrum of medical imaging technologies such as MRI, X-Ray, CT and others.