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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2026 Feb 18.
Published in final edited form as: IEEE Trans Med Imaging. 2026 Mar;45(3):1115–1126. doi: 10.1109/TMI.2025.3618247

TABLE II.

Effectiveness of the LeqMod in PET image denoising, across multiple vendors and varying levels of noise. Metrics include NRMSE, PSNR, SSIM, lesion SUVmean bias, SUVmax bias, and TLG bias.

Scanner Quadra uExplorer mCT

count level 1% 2% 5% 10% 25% 50% 1% 2% 5% 10% 25% 50% 5% 10% 20%

NRMSE (↓)
low-count 0.848 0.562 0.351 0.253 0.159 0.096 1.863 1.064 0.621 0.441 0.266 0.160 1.151 0.784 0.521

w/o 0.278 0.237 0.211 0.193 0.130 0.096 0.568 0.464 0.404 0.296 0.220 0.162 0.519 0.438 0.350
w 0.267 † 0.223 † 0.196 † 0.174 † 0.125 † 0.088 † 0.541 † 0.436 † 0.387 † 0.286 † 0.209 † 0.147 † 0.510 † 0.427 † 0.342 †

PSNR (↑)
low-count 53.496 53.491 53.145 54.601 57.767 61.920 42.709 44.554 47.718 50.062 53.933 58.116 44.487 46.325 48.944

w/o 52.405 53.883 55.424 56.640 58.903 61.413 46.154 48.224 50.352 52.048 54.431 57.937 47.306 48.809 50.731
w 52.762 † 54.051 † 55.743 † 56.850 † 59.190 † 62.220 † 46.835 † 48.656 † 50.745 † 52.285 † 54.968 † 58.038 † 47.285 48.899 50.857 †

SSIM (↑)
low-count 92.289 94.543 97.934 99.152 99.774 99.919 89.309 94.320 97.497 98.655 99.479 99.808 92.676 95.641 97.759

w/o 99.445 99.413 99.479 99.631 99.808 99.896 97.458 97.702 99.050 99.251 99.590 99.726 97.952 98.415 98.894
w 99.450 † 99.639 † 99.429 99.769 † 99.867 † 99.931 † 98.016 † 98.750 † 99.121 † 99.440 † 99.674 † 99.822 † 98.091 † 98.588 † 99.003 †

SUVmean bias (%) (o)
low-count −2.882 −0.444 1.189 1.703 1.488 1.052 −4.754 −0.780 1.180 1.378 0.917 0.815 −3.953 −2.137 −0.802

w/o −20.948 −15.127 −9.445 −6.694 −3.858 −3.209 −34.051 −25.021 −15.913 −11.023 −7.318 −5.933 −25.517 −20.095 −13.199
w −17.128 † −12.840 † −8.491 † −5.711 † −3.131 † −1.557 † −28.726 † −20.591 † −12.737 † −8.471 † −4.192 † −2.494 † −23.469 † −17.493 † −11.657 †

SUVmax bias (%) (o)
low-count 57.743 30.397 16.241 10.933 6.205 3.271 88.944 38.594 17.863 10.998 5.399 2.929 24.004 13.675 6.638

w/o −26.473 −20.177 −13.468 −9.816 −6.474 −6.318 −43.518 −32.297 −20.356 −14.586 −10.081 −8.942 −28.522 −23.243 −16.480
w −19.274 † −15.108 † −10.181 † −6.959 † −3.809 † −2.546 † −31.132 † −23.759 † −15.350 † −10.463 † −4.848 † −2.985 † −24.676 † −18.803 † −13.296 †

TLG bias (%) (o)
low-count −1.963 −0.742 0.174 0.545 0.596 0.469 −2.362 0.127 1.382 1.368 0.921 0.769 −1.154 −0.476 −0.360

w/o −5.142 −3.772 −2.446 −2.076 −1.311 −1.055 −13.643 −8.975 −5.463 −3.591 −2.495 −2.081 −8.386 −6.179 −4.172
w −3.983 † −3.261 † −2.394 −1.671 † −1.281 −0.692 † −10.058 † −6.332 † −3.487 † −2.321 † −1.251 † −0.744 † −7.415 † −5.169 † −3.557 †
†

P<0.05 based on the Wilcoxon signed-rank test between groups without (w/o) and with (w) the LeqMod.

(↑), (↓) and (o) represent expecting higher, lower, and zero-approaching values, respectively.