StruNet: Perceptual and low-rank regularized transformer for medical image denoising

Ma，Yuhui1,2; Yan，Qifeng1; Liu，Yonghuai3; Liu，Jiang4; Zhang，Jiong1; Zhao，Yitian1

2023

10.1002/mp.16550

Medical Physics   Impact Factor & Quartile

0094-2405

2473-4209

Background: Various types of noise artifacts inevitably exist in some medical imaging modalities due to limitations of imaging techniques, which impair either clinical diagnosis or subsequent analysis. Recently, deep learning approaches have been rapidly developed and applied on medical images for noise removal or image quality enhancement. Nevertheless, due to complexity and diversity of noise distribution representations in different medical imaging modalities, most of the existing deep learning frameworks are incapable to flexibly remove noise artifacts while retaining detailed information. As a result, it remains challenging to design an effective and unified medical image denoising method that will work across a variety of noise artifacts for different imaging modalities without requiring specialized knowledge in performing the task. Purpose: In this paper, we propose a novel encoder-decoder architecture called Swin transformer-based residual u-shape Network (StruNet), for medical image denoising. Methods: Our StruNet adopts a well-designed block as the backbone of the encoder-decoder architecture, which integrates Swin Transformer modules with residual block in parallel connection. Swin Transformer modules could effectively learn hierarchical representations of noise artifacts via self-attention mechanism in non-overlapping shifted windows and cross-window connection, while residual block is advantageous to compensate loss of detailed information via shortcut connection. Furthermore, perceptual loss and low-rank regularization are incorporated into loss function respectively in order to constrain the denoising results on feature-level consistency and low-rank characteristics. Results: To evaluate the performance of the proposed method, we have conducted experiments on three medical imaging modalities including computed tomography (CT), optical coherence tomography (OCT) and optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA). Conclusions: The results demonstrate that the proposed architecture yields a promising performance of suppressing multiform noise artifacts existing in different imaging modalities.

low-rank regularization medical image denoising perceptual loss Swin transformer

SCI

English

Others

Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation["LR22F020008","LZ19F010001"] ; Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS[2021298] ; Ningbo 2025 ST Mega projects[2021Z054] ; Health Science and Technology Project of Zhejiang Province[2021PY073]

Radiology, Nuclear Medicine & Medical Imaging

Radiology, Nuclear Medicine & Medical Imaging

WOS:000999945000001

WILEY

CLINICAL MEDICINE

2-s2.0-85161621408

Scopus

1.Cixi Institute of Biomedical Engineering,Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering Chinese Academy of Sciences,Cixi,China
2.University of Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing,China
3.Department of Computer Science,Edge Hill University,Ormskirk,United Kingdom
4.Department of Computer Science and Engineering,Southern University of Science and Technology,Shenzhen,China

Ma，Yuhui,Yan，Qifeng,Liu，Yonghuai,et al. StruNet: Perceptual and low-rank regularized transformer for medical image denoising[J]. Medical Physics,2023.

Ma，Yuhui,Yan，Qifeng,Liu，Yonghuai,Liu，Jiang,Zhang，Jiong,&Zhao，Yitian.(2023).StruNet: Perceptual and low-rank regularized transformer for medical image denoising.Medical Physics.

Ma，Yuhui,et al."StruNet: Perceptual and low-rank regularized transformer for medical image denoising".Medical Physics (2023).