Quantitative image quality improvement in spatially filtered image sequences

We quantitatively investigated the effect of simulated edge-preserving spatial filtering on image quality of simulated X-ray fluoroscopy images. Using very objective detection tests with human-observers, we compared image quality in image sequences with that in single frames. Although the effect in single frames was insignificant, spatial filtering improved detection in sequences by as much as 23%. In both cases, pixel noise reduction, a measure often used to assess filters, clearly overestimated filter effectiveness. We conclude that edge-preserving filtering is more effective in sequences than in single images and that such filtering may be used to improve image quality in noisy image sequences