# Window-Level is a Strong Denoising Surrogate

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.07153 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.07153/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 29 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 May 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Auto-Encoding Variational Bayes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.6114/) (2013)
- [Beyond a Gaussian Denoiser: Residual Learning of Deep CNN for Image Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.03981/) (2016)
- [Improving Variational Inference with Inverse Autoregressive Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04934/) (2016)
- [Noise2Void - Learning Denoising from Single Noisy Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.10980/) (2018)
- [Low-Dose CT with a Residual Encoder-Decoder Convolutional Neural Network (RED-CNN)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.00288/) (2017)
- [Low Dose CT Image Denoising Using a Generative Adversarial Network with Wasserstein Distance and Perceptual Loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.00961/) (2017)
- [High-Quality Self-Supervised Deep Image Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.10277/) (2019)
- [Variational Denoising Network: Toward Blind Noise Modeling and Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.11314/) (2019)
- [Noise2Same: Optimizing A Self-Supervised Bound for Image Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11971/) (2020)
- [Denoising Criterion for Variational Auto-Encoding Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06406/) (2015)
- [Sharpness-aware Low dose CT denoising using conditional generative adversarial network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.06453/) (2017)
- [Low-dose CT denoising with convolutional neural network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.00321/) (2016)
- [Self-supervised Dynamic CT Perfusion Image Denoising with Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.09766/) (2020)
- [Cascaded Convolutional Neural Networks with Perceptual Loss for Low Dose CT Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.14738/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

CT image quality is heavily reliant on radiation dose, which causes a trade-off between radiation dose and image quality that affects the subsequent image-based diagnostic performance. However, high radiation can be harmful to both patients and operators. Several (deep learning-based) approaches have been attempted to denoise low dose images. However, those approaches require access to large training sets, specifically the full dose CT images for reference, which can often be difficult to obtain. Self-supervised learning is an emerging alternative for lowering the reference data requirement facilitating unsupervised learning. Currently available self-supervised CT denoising works are either dependent on foreign domain or pretexts are not very task-relevant. To tackle the aforementioned challenges, we propose a novel self-supervised learning approach, namely Self-Supervised Window-Leveling for Image DeNoising (SSWL-IDN), leveraging an innovative, task-relevant, simple, yet effective surrogate -- prediction of the window-leveled equivalent. SSWL-IDN leverages residual learning and a hybrid loss combining perceptual loss and MSE, all incorporated in a VAE framework. Our extensive (in- and cross-domain) experimentation demonstrates the effectiveness of SSWL-IDN in aggressive denoising of CT (abdomen and chest) images acquired at 5% dose level only.