chapter 2, Applied Linear-Systems Theory

In PART I. PHYSICS from: Handbook of Medical Imaging, Volume 1. Physics and Psychophysics

Editor(s): Richard L. Van Metter, Jacob Beutel, Harold L. Kundel

Author(s): Ian A. Cunningham

Published: 16 February 2000

Chapter DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/3.832716.ch2

Chapter Page Count: 81 pages

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

Front Matter

PART I. PHYSICS
1. X-Ray Production, Interaction, and Detection in Diagnostic Imaging

2. Applied Linear-Systems Theory

3. Image Quality Metrics for Digital Systems

4. Flat Panel Detectors for Digital Radiography

5. Digital Mammography

6. Magnetic Resonance Imaging

7. Three-Dimensional Ultrasound Imaging

8. Tomographic Imaging

PART II. PSYCHOPHYSICS
9. Ideal Observer Models of Visual Signal Detection

10. A Practical Guide to Model Observers for Visual Detection in Synthetic and Natural Noisy Images

11. Modeling Visual Detection Tasks in Correlated Image Noise with Linear Model Observers

12. Effects of Anatomical Structure on Signal Detection

13. Synthesizing Anatomical Images for Image Understanding

14. Quantitative Image Quality Studies and the Design of X-Ray Fluoroscopy Systems

15. Fundamental ROC Analysis

16. The FROC, AFROC and DROC Variants of the ROC Analysis

17. Agreement and Accuracy Mixture Distribution Analysis

18. Visual Search in Medical Images

19. The Nature of Expertise in Radiology

20. Practical Applications of Perceptual Research

Back Matter

Preview

Chapter Contents

2.1 Introduction
2.2 Background concepts
2.3 Introduction to linear-systems theory
2.4 The spatial-frequency domain
2.5 Stochastic processes in linear systems
2.6 Metrics of system performance
2.7 Noise transfer in cascaded imaging systems
2.8 Cascaded DQE and quantum sinks
2.9 Metrics of digital-system performance
2.10 Analysis of a simple digital detector array
2.11 Summary
References

Excerpt

2.1 Introduction

A wide variety of both digital and nondigital medical-imaging systems are now in clinical use and many new system designs are under development. These are all complex systems, with multiple physical processes involved in the conversion of an input signal (e.g., x rays) to the final output image viewed by the interpreting physician. For every system, a high-quality image is obtained only when all processes are properly designed so as to ensure accurate transfer of the image signal and noise from input to output.

An important aspect of imaging science is to understand the fundamental physics and engineering principles of these processes, and to predict how they influence final image quality. For instance, it has been known since the work of Rose [1–4], Shaw [5], and others that the image signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is ultimately limited by the number of quanta used to create the image. This is illustrated in Figure 2.1, showing the improvement in image quality as the number of x-ray quanta used to produce images of a skull phantom is increased from 45 to 6720 quanta∕mm². Negligible image noise was added by the imaging system.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/3.832716.ch2

Your library does not subscribe to the eBooks portion of the SPIE Digital Library.