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arxiv: 2605.01075 · v1 · submitted 2026-05-01 · 💻 cs.CV

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Neighbor2Inverse: Self-Supervised Denoising for Low-Dose Region-of-Interest Phase Contrast CT

Daniela Pfeiffer, Daniel Frey, Florian Schaff, Franz Pfeiffer, Jannis Ahlers, Johannes B. Thalhammer, Kaye S. Morgan, Lorenzo D'Amico, Lucy Costello, Marcus Kitchen, Martin Donnelley, Ronan Smith, Sebastian Peterhansl, Tina Dorosti

Authors on Pith no claims yet

Pith reviewed 2026-05-09 19:13 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification 💻 cs.CV
keywords self-supervised denoisinglow-dose CTphase-contrast imagingpropagation-based imagingregion-of-interest CTNeighbor2Neighbor
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The pith

Neighbor2Inverse enables self-supervised denoising for low-dose region-of-interest phase contrast CT by training on subsampled projection pairs.

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The paper introduces Neighbor2Inverse, a self-supervised denoising framework for low-dose propagation-based X-ray phase-contrast CT that avoids the need for paired low- and high-dose datasets. Each noisy projection is subsampled into two variants that preserve structure but have independent noise, then reconstructed separately to create training pairs for a denoising network in the image domain. In ROI PBI CT experiments, it demonstrates superior noise suppression and detail preservation over analytical and self-supervised baselines, measured by improved contrast-to-noise ratio, spatial resolution, and quality metrics, with competitive results on clinical CT under low-dose simulation. This approach supports safer medical imaging by enabling effective denoising without high-dose references.

Core claim

Neighbor2Inverse achieves superior noise suppression while preserving fine structural details in low-dose region-of-interest phase contrast CT experiments, as shown by better contrast-to-noise ratio, spatial resolution, and composite image quality metrics, through self-supervised training on image pairs from separately reconstructed subsampled projections.

What carries the argument

The Neighbor2Inverse method, which builds on Neighbor2Neighbor by subsampling noisy projections into two independent-noise variants for separate reconstruction and image-domain self-supervised denoising training.

If this is right

  • Superior performance in noise suppression and detail preservation for PBI CT.
  • Competitive denoising on simulated low-dose clinical CT data.
  • Avoids requirement for paired high-dose training data.
  • Generalizes the Neighbor2Neighbor principle to the PBI-CT inverse problem.

Where Pith is reading between the lines

These are editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

  • The method could enable lower radiation doses in clinical phase-contrast lung imaging.
  • It may inspire similar self-supervised approaches for other CT modalities or noise reduction tasks.
  • Validation on actual clinical low-dose scans, rather than simulations, would be a natural next test.

Load-bearing premise

Subsampling each noisy projection produces two variants with independent noise realizations but identical structural information.

What would settle it

If applying the method results in no improvement in contrast-to-noise ratio or loss of fine details in the denoised images relative to baselines, the claim would be falsified.

Figures

Figures reproduced from arXiv: 2605.01075 by Daniela Pfeiffer, Daniel Frey, Florian Schaff, Franz Pfeiffer, Jannis Ahlers, Johannes B. Thalhammer, Kaye S. Morgan, Lorenzo D'Amico, Lucy Costello, Marcus Kitchen, Martin Donnelley, Ronan Smith, Sebastian Peterhansl, Tina Dorosti.

Figure 1
Figure 1. Figure 1: A The Neighbor subsampling algorithm. B The Neighbor2Inverse pipeline C with a data fidelity regularization instead of the regularization based on different underlying signals. 2.3.2 Neighbor2Inverse The proposed Neighbor2Inverse method (Fig. 1B) extends Neighbor2Neighbor to the tomographic inverse problem by training the denoising network directly in the image domain, where spatial correlations can be mor… view at source ↗
Figure 2
Figure 2. Figure 2: Comparison of denoising methods applied to two 15 ms reconstructed propagation-based CT images from the view at source ↗
Figure 3
Figure 3. Figure 3: Comparison of denoising methods applied to clinical CT data with simulated noise added at projection level. view at source ↗
Figure 4
Figure 4. Figure 4: Denoising results of various Neighbor2Inverse approaches applied to two 15 ms reconstructed propagation view at source ↗
Figure 5
Figure 5. Figure 5: Sensitivity Analysis. The initial heuristically chosen weight view at source ↗
Figure 6
Figure 6. Figure 6: Denoising results of various Neighbor2Inverse and the Neighbor2Neighbor approaches applied to a sparse 15 view at source ↗
Figure 7
Figure 7. Figure 7: Denoising results of Neighbor2Inverse with varying exposure times and projection views. The displayed images view at source ↗
Figure 8
Figure 8. Figure 8: Quantitative evaluation of the different denoising methods applied on view at source ↗
read the original abstract

Propagation-based X-ray phase-contrast imaging (PBI) enables high-contrast visualization of lung structures and holds strong medical potential. However, safe translation to the clinic will require a substantial radiation dose reduction, which inevitably increases image noise. Supervised convolutional-neural-network-based denoising can restore image quality but depends on paired low- and high-dose datasets, which are rarely available in practice. Self-supervised methods avoid this limitation, yet most are not well adapted to the inverse problem of PBI computed tomography (CT). We introduce Neighbor2Inverse, a self-supervised denoising framework designed for low-dose PBI-CT that generalizes to clinical CT. Building on the Neighbor2Neighbor principle, each noisy projection is subsampled into two variants that preserve structural information but contain independent noise realizations. These are reconstructed separately, and the resulting pairs are used to train a denoising network directly in the image domain. We benchmark the proposed method against established analytical and self-supervised denoising approaches. In region-of-interest PBI CT experiments, Neighbor2Inverse achieves superior noise suppression while preserving fine structural details, as demonstrated by improved contrast-to-noise ratio, spatial resolution, and composite image quality metrics. Competitive performance is also observed on clinical CT data under simulated low-dose conditions. This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessible. Code, data, and interactive figures are available at https://github.com/J-3TO/Neighbor2Inverse.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Referee Report

2 major / 2 minor

Summary. The manuscript proposes Neighbor2Inverse, a self-supervised denoising framework for low-dose region-of-interest propagation-based phase-contrast CT (PBI-CT) that generalizes to clinical CT. It adapts the Neighbor2Neighbor principle by subsampling each noisy projection into two variants that preserve structure but contain independent noise, reconstructing the pairs separately, and training a denoising network directly in the image domain. Experiments on ROI PBI-CT data report superior noise suppression and detail preservation via improved contrast-to-noise ratio, spatial resolution, and composite quality metrics compared to analytical and self-supervised baselines, with competitive performance under simulated low-dose clinical CT conditions. Code and data are made available.

Significance. If the core training-pair assumption holds, the method could enable effective denoising for PBI-CT without requiring scarce paired low/high-dose data, supporting safer clinical translation through dose reduction while preserving fine lung structures. The explicit generalization test on clinical CT and the public release of code, data, and interactive figures are strengths that aid reproducibility and adoption.

major comments (2)
  1. [§3 (Method)] §3 (Method), pair-generation step: the claim that subsampling each projection produces pairs with identical underlying structure but uncorrelated noise after separate phase retrieval and reconstruction is central to the self-supervised loss, yet no direct validation (e.g., measured noise correlation coefficient or structural similarity between the reconstructed pair images) is provided. Nonlinear phase retrieval (Paganin-type or equivalent) and ROI truncation/interpolation can introduce correlations or structural mismatches, rendering the loss unreliable; this must be quantified before the superiority claims can be accepted.
  2. [§4 (Experiments)] §4 (Experiments), quantitative results: the reported gains in CNR, spatial resolution, and composite metrics on ROI PBI-CT lack accompanying statistical analysis (number of independent volumes, p-values, or standard deviations across runs), and the precise baseline implementations (including which self-supervised methods and their hyperparameters) are insufficiently specified to allow reproduction or assessment of whether the improvements are robust.
minor comments (2)
  1. [Abstract and §4] The abstract and method sections refer to 'composite image quality metrics' without an explicit definition or formula in the main text; a short clarification or reference would improve readability.
  2. [Figures in §4] Figure captions and axis labels in the experimental results could more clearly distinguish between the proposed method and each baseline to aid quick visual comparison.

Simulated Author's Rebuttal

2 responses · 0 unresolved

We thank the referee for the constructive and detailed review. We address each major comment below and will revise the manuscript to incorporate the suggested improvements for greater rigor and reproducibility.

read point-by-point responses
  1. Referee: [§3 (Method)] §3 (Method), pair-generation step: the claim that subsampling each projection produces pairs with identical underlying structure but uncorrelated noise after separate phase retrieval and reconstruction is central to the self-supervised loss, yet no direct validation (e.g., measured noise correlation coefficient or structural similarity between the reconstructed pair images) is provided. Nonlinear phase retrieval (Paganin-type or equivalent) and ROI truncation/interpolation can introduce correlations or structural mismatches, rendering the loss unreliable; this must be quantified before the superiority claims can be accepted.

    Authors: We agree that direct empirical validation of the core assumption is necessary to support the self-supervised framework. While the projection subsampling is designed to occur prior to phase retrieval and reconstruction to maintain independent noise while preserving structure, we acknowledge that nonlinear phase retrieval and ROI processing steps could introduce unintended correlations. In the revised manuscript, we will add quantitative validation in Section 3, including measured noise correlation coefficients and structural similarity (SSIM) values between the reconstructed image pairs, to confirm that the pairs remain suitable for the loss function. revision: yes

  2. Referee: [§4 (Experiments)] §4 (Experiments), quantitative results: the reported gains in CNR, spatial resolution, and composite metrics on ROI PBI-CT lack accompanying statistical analysis (number of independent volumes, p-values, or standard deviations across runs), and the precise baseline implementations (including which self-supervised methods and their hyperparameters) are insufficiently specified to allow reproduction or assessment of whether the improvements are robust.

    Authors: We acknowledge that the current presentation of results would benefit from additional statistical details and explicit baseline specifications to strengthen the claims and support reproducibility. In the revised version, we will report standard deviations across independent volumes or multiple runs for all metrics, specify the number of test volumes used, and include p-values for the reported improvements. We will also expand the experimental section with precise descriptions of all baseline methods, including their implementations, hyperparameters, and any adaptations for the PBI-CT data. revision: yes

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

No circularity in the proposed self-supervised framework

full rationale

The paper proposes Neighbor2Inverse as an empirical training procedure that adapts subsampling of noisy projections into pairs, performs separate reconstructions, and trains a denoising network in the image domain. This is validated through direct experiments on ROI PBI-CT and clinical CT data using external benchmarks and comparative metrics (CNR, spatial resolution, composite quality). No equations, fitted parameters, or derivation steps are presented that reduce predictions or results to the inputs by construction. The central claims rest on experimental outcomes rather than self-referential definitions or load-bearing self-citations.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

0 free parameters · 1 axioms · 0 invented entities

The method depends on the domain assumption that subsampling creates independent noise realizations while preserving structure, drawn from the Neighbor2Neighbor principle.

axioms (1)
  • domain assumption Subsampling a noisy projection produces two variants with independent noise but identical underlying structure
    Core premise enabling self-supervised pairs without high-dose references.

pith-pipeline@v0.9.0 · 5622 in / 1134 out tokens · 36467 ms · 2026-05-09T19:13:36.563612+00:00 · methodology

discussion (0)

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Reference graph

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