%0 Journal Article
%A Prieto Renieblas, Gabriel
%A Guibelalde Del Castillo, Eduardo
%A Chevalier Del Río, Margarita
%A Turrero Nogués, Agustín
%T Use of the cross-correlation component of the multiscale structural similarity metric (R metric) for the evaluation of medical images
%D 2011
%@ 0094-2405
%U https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/44637
%X Purpose: The aim of the present work is to analyze the potential of the cross-correlation component of the multiscale structural similarity metric (R*) to predict human performance in detail detection tasks closely related with diagnostic x-ray images. To check the effectiveness of R, the authors have initially applied this metric to a contrast detail detection task. Methods: Threshold contrast visibility using the R* metric was determined for two sets of images of a contrast-detail phantom (CDMAM). Results from R and human observers were compared as far as the contrast threshold was concerned. A comparison between the R* metric and two algorithms currently used to evaluate CDMAM images was also performed. Results: Similar trends for the CDMAM detection task of human observers and R* were found in this study. Threshold contrast visibility values using R* are statistically indistinguishable from those obtained by human observers (F-test statistics: p > 0.05). Conclusions: These results using R* show that it could be used to mimic human observers for certain tasks, such as the determination of contrast detail curves in the presence of uniform random noise backgrounds. The R* metric could also outperform other metrics and algorithms currently used to evaluate CDMAM images and can automate this evaluation task.
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