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I am trying to find the frequency of the artifact on the MRI image of the knee below both manually and with ImageJ:

enter image description here

As you can see the artifact results in a bar pattern extending horizontally along the image - i.e. a spike artifact.

After transforming to Fourier space, there are a couple of dots along the x-axis that seem to stand out in their intensity (yellow circles), and are therefore potential culprits for the artifact:

enter image description here

at frequencies $5.02\text{ pixels/cycle}$ and $2.4\text{ pixels/cycle},$ but the frequency that I calculate visually (and painfully) on the $256 \times 256\text{ pixel}$ image corresponds to $\approx 53 \text{ dark vertical bars},$ which would amount to

$$\frac{256}{53}=4.8\text{ pixel/cycle}$$

This is close enough to the the higher frequency dot in Fourier space ($5.02 \text{ pixels/cycle})$. Is this the explanation for the artifact?

Is there a contribution from the second dot that should be considered?

Here is the complete analysis of both dots:

enter image description here

$$\small\begin{align}\text{Freq}&=5.019\text{ pix/cycle}\\ \text{Direction}&=181.12^°\\ \text{Phase }&= \arctan(68.263/-87.982)=-0.6598^°\\ \text{Magnitude}&=\sqrt{(-87.982)^2 +(68.263)^2}=111.36 \end{align}$$

enter image description here

$$\small\begin{align} \text{Freq}&=2.438 \text{ pix/cycle}\\ \text{Direction}&=181.091^°\\ \text{Phase }&= \arctan(10.977/-5.43)=-1.11^°\\ \text{Magnitude}&=\sqrt{(-5.43)^2+(10.977)^2}=12.25 \end{align}$$


Great answer on ImageJ forum.

1 Answers1

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I agree that 4.8 is pretty close to 5.02. There is nothing else in that neighborhood that grabs my attention.

The higher frequency spike looks like the next harmonic of that first spike frequency. It probably represents some additional structure to the artifact.

Note, unless it is windowed funny, this is NOT a classic spike artifact. In the lower left corner of the image there is a small section of background air in the image. The artifact does not appear (with this windowing) to go into the background as spikes do. Therefore, this artifact is a result of MR signal, not an external spike signal. It may be insufficient spoiling or something similar.

Dale
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