Tracing of vessels is one of the most fundamental techniques in a computer-aided diagnostic (CAD) scheme for vascular systems. A major challenge of methods for tracing vessels is to trace vessels robustly against noise, vessel branching, vessel size changes, and curved vessels, because those factors often lead to errors in tracing. Among them, the robustness against vessel size changes is espec Read more...

We developed a supervised nonlinear filter based on an artificial neural network (ANN), called a “neural filter,” for reduction of quantum noise in coronary angiograms. The neural filter can be trained with input images and the corresponding teaching images. To learn the relationship between low-dose and high-dose x-ray images, we created simulated low-dose angiograms from actual high-dose Read more...