Improving the Performance of the Prony Method Using a Wavelet Domain Filter for MRI Denoising

Abstract

The Prony methods are used for exponential fitting. We use a variant of the Prony method for abnormal brain tissue detection in sequences ofT2weighted magnetic resonance images. Here, MR images are considered to be affected only by Rician noise, and a new wavelet domain bilateral filtering process is implemented to reduce the noise in the images. This filter is a modification of Kazubek’s algorithm and we use synthetic images to show the ability of the new procedure to suppress noise and compare its performance with respect to the original filter, using quantitative and qualitative criteria. The tissue classification process is illustrated using a real sequence ofT2MR images, and the filter is applied to each image before using the variant of the Prony method.