Windows Application to identify, score and display Windmill Artifacts.

Abstract

While researching techniques to reduce Windmill Artifacts (WMA) in CT images, I encountered the need to have systematic tool to evaluate the level of the artifacts. In the research environment there are typically high-resolution and low-resolution scans of the same body. The windmill artifacts appear on the images that are reconstructed from the low-resolution data. The new tool evaluates the difference between the two sets of images and uses several image processing and pattern recognition techniques to identify which are the most significant windmill artifacts. For each identified area with artifacts, the tool computes a score that represents the severity of the artifacts. When experimenting with different techniques to reduce the artifacts, applying the scoring tool can help the researcher to find which techniques, algorithms or parameters are most efficient.