TED-net: Convolution-free T2T Vision Transformer-based Encoder-decoder Dilation network for Low-dose CT Denoising

Abstract

Low dose computed tomography is a mainstream for clinical applications. However, compared to normal dose CT, in the low dose CT (LDCT) images, there are stronger noise and more artifacts which are obstacles for practical applications. In the last few years, convolution-based end-to-end deep learning methods have been widely used for LDCT image denoising. Recently, transformer has shown superior performance over convolution with more feature interactions. Yet its applications in LDCT denoising have not been fully cultivated. Here, we propose a convolution-free T2T vision transformer-based Encoder-decoder Dilation network (TED-net) to enrich the family of LDCT denoising algorithms. The model is free of convolution blocks and consists of a symmetric encoder-decoder block with sole transformer. Our model is evaluated on the AAPM-Mayo clinic LDCT Grand Challenge dataset, and results show outperformance over the state-of-the-art denoising methods.