PPORLD-EDNetLDCT: A Proximal Policy Optimization-based reinforcement learning framework for adaptive low-dose CT denoising

Low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) is critical for minimizing radiation exposure, but it often leads to increased noise and reduced image quality. Traditional denoising methods, such as iterative optimization or supervised learning, often fail to preserve image quality. To address these challenges, we introduce PPORLD-EDNetLDCT, a reinforcement learning-based (RL) approach with Encoder–Decoder for LDCT. Our method utilizes a dynamic RL-based approach in which the Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) algorithm is employed to optimize the denoising policy during training, guided by image quality feedback in a custom gym environment, while inference is performed using the trained fixed-parameter encoder–decoder model. The experimental results on the low dose CT image and projection dataset demonstrate that the proposed PPORLD-EDNetLDCT model outperforms traditional denoising techniques and other DL-based methods, achieving a peak signal-to-noise ratio of 41.87, a structural similarity index measure of 0.9814 and a root mean squared error of 0.00236. Moreover, in NIH-AAPM-Mayo Clinic Low Dose CT Challenge dataset our method achieved a PSNR of 41.52, SSIM of 0.9723 and RMSE of 0.0051. Furthermore, we validated the quality of denoising using a classification task in the COVID-19 LDCT dataset, where the images processed by our method improved the classification accuracy to 94%, achieving 4% higher accuracy compared to denoising without RL-based denoising.