Noise reduction on mammographic phantom images

A noise reduction scheme on digitized mammographic phantom images is presented. This algorithm is based on a direct contrast modification method using an optimal function which is obtained by means of the mean squared error as a criterion. Computer simulated images containing objects similar to those observed in the phantom are built to evaluate the performance of the algorithm. Noise reduction results obtained on both simulated and real phantom images show that the developed method may be considered as a good pre-processing step from the point of view of automating phantom film evaluation by means of image processing.