Patent ID: 7835562

Claim:
A method for reducing noise in images, said method comprising: acquiring a single original image using an electron beam computed tomographic scanner; generating original image data associated with an input of the single original image; generating segmentation mask data from the single original image and a single threshold, the segmentation mask data representing a segmentation mask of structural portions and non-structural portions in the single original image; generating filtered image data from the segmentation mask data by scaling intensity values and using a connectivity approach, the filtered image data representing a filtered image; defining a first blending parameter for the structural portions in the filtered image and a second blending parameter for the non-structural portions in the filtered image, the first blending parameter different than the second blending parameter; generating blended image data from the filtered image data, the original image data, the segmentation mask data, and the blending parameters for; and contrast matching the blended image data with the original image data to produce output image data, the output image data representing a single processed image.