Gradient Guided Co-Retention Feature Pyramid Network for LDCT Image Denoising

Low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) reduces the risks of radiation exposure but introduces noise and artifacts into CT images. The Feature Pyramid Network (FPN) is a conventional method for extracting multi-scale feature maps from input images. While upper layers in FPN enhance semantic value, details become generalized with reduced spatial resolution at each layer. In this work, we propose a Gradient Guided Co-Retention Feature Pyramid Network (G2CR-FPN) to address the connection between spatial resolution and semantic value beyond feature maps extracted from LDCT images. The network is structured with three essential paths: the bottom-up path utilizes the FPN structure to generate the hierarchical feature maps, representing multi-scale spatial resolutions and semantic values. Meanwhile, the lateral path serves as a skip connection between feature maps with the same spatial resolution, while also functioning feature maps as directional gradients. This path incorporates a gradient approximation, deriving edge-like enhanced feature maps in horizontal and vertical directions. The top-down path incorporates a proposed co-retention block that learns the high-level semantic value embedded in the preceding map of the path. This learning process is guided by the directional gradient approximation of the high-resolution feature map from the bottom-up path. Experimental results on the clinical CT images demonstrated the promising performance of the model. Our code is available at: https://github.com/liz109/G2CR-FPN.