SABER: A Systems Approach to Blur Estimation and Reduction in X-ray Imaging

Abstract: Blur in X-ray radiographs not only reduces the sharpness of image edges but also reduces the overall contrast. The effective blur in a radiograph is the combined effect of blur from multiple sources such as the detector panel, X-ray source spot, and system motion. In this paper, we use a systems approach to model the point spread function (PSF) of the effective radiographic blur as the convolution of multiple PSFs, where each PSF models one of the various sources of blur. In particular, we model the combined contribution of X-ray source and detector blurs while assuming negligible contribution from other forms of blur. Then, we present a numerical optimization algorithm for estimating the source and detector PSFs from multiple radiographs acquired at different X-ray source to object (SOD) and object to detector distances (ODD). Finally, we computationally reduce blur in radiographs using deblurring algorithms that use the estimated PSFs from the previous step. Our approach to estimate and reduce blur is called SABER, which is an acronym for systems approach to blur estimation and reduction.