COVID-19 CT image denoising algorithm based on adaptive threshold and optimized weighted median filter

CT image of COVID-19 is disturbed by impulse noise during transmission and acquisition. Aiming at the problem that the early lesions of COVID-19 are not obvious and the density is low, which is easy to confuse with noise. A median filtering algorithm based on adaptive two-stage threshold is proposed to improve the accuracy for noise detection. In the advanced stage of ground-glass lesion, the density is uneven and the boundary is unclear. It has similar gray value to the CT images of suspected COVID-19 cases such as adenovirus pneumonia and mycoplasma pneumonia (reticular shadow and strip shadow). Aiming at the problem that the traditional weighted median filter has low contrast and fuzzy boundary, an adaptive weighted median filter image denoising method based on hybrid genetic algorithm is proposed. The weighted denoising parameters can adaptively change according to the detailed information of lung lobes and ground-glass lesions, and it can adaptively match the cross and mutation probability of genetic combined with the steady-state regional population density, so as to obtain a more accurate COVID-19 denoised image with relatively few iterations. The simulation results show that the improved algorithm under different density of impulse noise is significantly better than other algorithms in peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), image enhancement factor (IEF) and mean absolute error (MSE). While protecting the details of lesions, it enhances the ability of image denoising.