Medical image contrast enhancement based on improved sparrow search algorithm

The collection or transmission of medical images is often disturbed by various factors, such as insufficient brightness and noise pollution, which will result in the deterioration of image quality and significantly affect the clinical diagnosis. To improve the quality of medical images, a contrast enhancement method based on improved sparrow search algorithm is proposed in this paper. The method is divided into two steps to enhance the medical images. First, a new transform function is introduced to improve the brightness or contrast of medical images, and two parameters in the transform function are optimized by the improved sparrow search algorithm. Second, adaptive histogram equalization method with contrast limited is used to equalize the result image of the previous step to make the pixel distribution of the image more uniform. Finally, a large number of experiments and qualitative and quantitative analyses were conducted on the common data sets. The analysis results demonstrate that the presented approach outperforms some existing medical image processing approaches.     

Gaussian probability bi-histogram equalization for enhancement of the pathological features in medical images

In order to enhance the pathological features of medical images and aid the medical diagnosis, the image enhancement is a necessary process. This study presented the Gaussian probability model combining with bi-histogram equalization to enhance the contrast of pathological features in medical images. There are five different bi-histogram equalizations, namely, bi-histogram equalization (BBHE), dualistic sub-image histogram equalization (DSIHE), bi-histogram equalization with a plateau limit (BHEPL), bi-histogram equalization median plateau limit (BHEPL-D), and bi-histogram equalization with modified histogram bins (BHEMHB). The entropy, contrast, absolute mean brightness error (AMBE), and skewness difference are used to quantize the enhancement results. From the experimental result, it is observed that the entropy and contrast of the images can be effectively enhanced by using Gaussian probability bi-histogram equalizations, and the Gaussian probability bi-histogram equalization median plateau limit (GPBHEPL-D) has the best enhanced result. The proposed GPBHEPL-D method is effective in strengthening the pathological features in medical images, so as to increase the efficiency of doctors' diagnoses and computer-aided detection.     

Contrast enhancement dynamic histogram equalization for medical image processing application

Image processing requires an excellent image contrast‐enhancement technique to extract useful information invisible to the human or machine vision. Because of the histogram flattening, the widely used conventional histogram equalization image‐enhancing technique suffers from severe brightness changes, rendering it undesirable. Hence, we introduce a contrast‐enhancement dynamic histogram‐equalization algorithm method that generates better output image by preserving the input mean brightness without introducing the unfavorable side effects of checkerboard effect, artefacts, and washed‐out appearance. The first procedure of this technique is; normalizing input histogram and followed by smoothing process. Then, the break point detection process is done to divide the histogram into subhistograms before we can remap the gray level allocation. Lastly, the transformation function of each subhistogram is constructed independently. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 21, 280‐289, 2011;     

图像对比度增强的非线性变换法

对原始图像用所提出的判据判断图像的对比度类型,针对不同类型直接确定灰度变换参数,实现图像全局对比度增强。再对图像进行离散平稳小波变换,利用所提出的非线性增强方法分别对各个分解层的高频子带进行细节增强。实验表明,提出的方法在有效提高图像整体对比度的同时,又能突出图像中目标的细节部分信息。     

An improved multimodal medical image fusion scheme based on hybrid combination of nonsubsampled contourlet transform and stationary wavelet transform

This research proposes an improved hybrid fusion scheme for non-subsampled contourlet transform (NSCT) and stationary wavelet transform (SWT). Initially, the source images are decomposed into different sub-bands using NSCT. The locally weighted sum of square of the coefficients based fusion rule with consistency verification is used to fuse the detailed coefficients of NSCT. The SWT is employed to decompose approximation coefficients of NSCT into different sub-bands. The entropy of square of the coefficients and weighted sum-modified Laplacian is employed as the fusion rules with SWT. The final output is obtained using inverse NSCT. The proposed research is compared with existing fusion schemes visually and quantitatively. From the visual analysis, it is observed that the proposed scheme retained important complementary information of source images in a better way. From the quantitative comparison, it is seen that this scheme gave improved edge information, clarity, contrast, texture, and brightness in the fused image.     

Neuro-wavelet based intelligent medical image fusion

Imaging based sensitive clinical diagnosis is critically depending on image quality. In this article, the problem of enhancing fundus images is addressed by a novel fusion technique. The proposed approach utilizes the representation capability of wavelet transform and the learning ability of artificial neural networks. In this approach, input images are decomposed into wavelet transform followed by appropriate feature extraction for training of neural networks to obtain fused image. To ensure homogeneity, it employs consistency verification for minimizing the fusion artifacts. The visual and quantitative performance of the proposed approach is assessed using a number of experiments performed on the standard datasets of DRIVE and DRION-DB. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed fusion technique offers high average structural similarity of “0.99.” The proposed approach outperforms state-of-the-art techniques which validates its effectiveness. The developed approach might be applied by the clinical diagnosis system for fundus related diseases.     

基于双频域特征聚合的低照度图像增强

针对低照度图像质量较差、噪声多、纹理模糊等问题,提出一种基于双频域特征聚合的低照度增强网络(dual frequency-domain feature aggregation network, DF-DFANet)。首先,构建频谱光照估计模块(frequency domain illumination estimation module, FDIEM)实现跨域特征提取,通过共轭对称约束调整频域特征图抑制噪声信号,并采用逐层融合方式提高多尺度融合效率以扩大特征图感受野范围。其次,设计多谱双注意力模块(multiple spectral attention module, MSAM)聚焦图像局部频率特征,通过小波域空间、通道注意力机制关注图像细节信息。最后,提出双域特征聚合模块(dual domain feature aggregation module, DDFAM)融合傅里叶域和小波域特征信息,利用激活函数计算自适应调整权重实现像素级图像增强,并结合傅里叶域全局信息提高融合效果。实验结果表明,在LOL数据集上所提网络的PSNR达到24.3714,SSIM达到0.8937。与对比网络相比,所提网络增强效果更具自然性。

     

Medical image enhancement algorithm based on NSCT and the improved fuzzy contrast

In order to solve the problem of noise amplification, low contrast and image distortion in the process of medical image enhancement, a new algorithm is proposed which combines NSCT (nonsubsampled contourlet transform) and improved fuzzy contrast. The image is decomposed by NSCT. Firstly, linear enhancement method is used in low frequency coefficients; secondly the improved adaptive threshold function is used to deal with the high frequency coefficients. Finally, the improved fuzzy contrast is used to enhance the global contrast and the Laplace operator is used to enhance the details of the medical images. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can improve the image visual effects, remove the noise and enhance the details of medical images. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 25, 7–14, 2015     

一种改进的遥感图像融合方法

针对传统的IHS变换和Mallat算法在融合多光谱图像和高空间分辨力图像时存在的不足,提出了一种将IHS变换和平稳小波变换相结合的遥感图像融合方法;另外,对多光谱图像和高空间分辨力图像因空间分辨力的不同而带来的融合图像中所存在的虚假轮廓问题,提出在融合过程中先定位虚假轮廓出现的位置,然后加以处理的方法.仿真结果表明,本文算法在光谱失真上小于IHS变换法,克服了Mallat算法存在的方块效应,同时较好的抑制了虚假轮廓.     

Contrast enhancement of medical images using fuzzy set theory and nonsubsampled shearlet transform

Noises and artifacts are introduced in medical images during the process of imaging and transmission, resulting in reduced definition and lack of detail. Therefore, a contrast enhancement method, based on fuzzy set theory and nonsubsampled shearlet transform (NSST), is proposed. First, the original image is decomposed into several high-frequency components and a low-frequency component by NSST. Then, the threshold method is used to remove noises in the high-frequency components. In addition, a linear stretch is used to improve the overall contrast in the low-frequency component. Then, the reconstruct image is reconstructed by applying the inverse NSST to the processed high-frequency and low-frequency components. Finally, the fuzzy contrast is used to improve the detail information and global contrast in the reconstruct image. Experimental results indicate that, relative to contrast algorithms, the peak signal-to-noise ratio of the proposed method is improved by approximately 18%, and the root mean square error (RMSE) is optimized to approximately 48%. The proposed method also improves the image definition and texture information. Moreover, when compared with the Improved Fuzzy Contrast Combined Adaptive Threshold in NSCT for Medical Image Enhancement, the processing time (time) of this proposed method optimizes about 86%, which can obviously improve the computational efficiency of this method.     

Improving medical image fusion method using fuzzy entropy and nonsubsampling contourlet transform

Many types of medical images must be fused, as single‐modality medical images can only provide limited information due to the imaging principles and the complexity of human organ structures. In this paper, a multimodal medical image fusion method that combines the advantages of nonsubsampling contourlet transform (NSCT) and fuzzy entropy is proposed to provide a basis for clinical diagnosis and improve the accuracy of target recognition and the quality of fused images. An image is initially decomposed into low‐ and high‐frequency subbands through NSCT. The corresponding fusion rules are adopted in accordance with the different characteristics of the low‐ and high‐frequency components. The membership degree of low‐frequency coefficients is calculated. The fuzzy entropy is also computed and subsequently used to guide the fusion of coefficients to preserve image details. High‐frequency components are fused by maximizing the regional energy. The final fused image is obtained by inverse transformation. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves good fusion effect based on the subjective visual effect and objective evaluation criteria. This method can also obtain high average gradient, SD, and edge preservation and effectively retain the details of the fused image. The results of the proposed algorithm can provide effective reference for doctors to assess patient condition.     

A novel multi-modal medical image fusion method based on shift-invariant shearlet transform

Abstract

Medical image fusion plays an important role in clinical applications, such as image-guided surgery, image-guided radiotherapy, non-invasive diagnosis and treatment planning. Shearlet is a novel multi-scale geometric analysis (MGA) tool proposed recently. In order to overcome the drawback of the shearlet-based fusion methods that the pseudo-Gibbs phenomenon is easily caused around the singularities of the fused image, a new multi-modal medical image fusion method is proposed in shift-invariant shearlet transform domain. First, the original images are decomposed into lowpass sub-bands and highpass sub-bands; then, the lowpass sub-bands and high sub-bands are combined according to the fusion rules, respectively. All the operations are performed in shift-invariant shearlet domain. The final fused image is obtained by directly applying inverse shift-invariant shearlet transform to the fused lowpass sub-bands and highpass sub-bands. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can not only suppress the pseudo-Gibbs phenomenon efficiently, but perform better than the popular wavelet transform-based method, contourlet transform-based method and non-subsampled contourlet transform-based method.     

Improving performance of wavelet-based image de-noising algorithm using complex diffusion process

Abstract

Image enhancement and de-noising is an essential pre-processing step in many image processing algorithms. In any image de-noising algorithm, the main concern is to keep the interesting structures of the image. Such interesting structures often correspond to the discontinuities (edges). In this paper, we present a new algorithm for image noise reduction based on the combination of complex diffusion process and wavelet thresholding. In the existing wavelet thresholding methods, the noise reduction is limited, because the approximate coefficients containing the main information of the image are kept unchanged. Since noise affects both the approximate and detail coefficients, the proposed algorithm for noise reduction applies the complex diffusion process on the approximation band in order to alleviate the deficiency of the existing wavelet thresholding methods. The algorithm has been examined using a variety of standard images and its performance has been compared against several de-noising algorithms known from the prior art. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm preserves the edges better and in most cases, improves the measured visual quality of the de-noised images in comparison to the existing methods known from the literature. The improvement is obtained without excessive computational cost, and the algorithm works well on a wide range of different types of noise.     

Cross-cumulative residual entropy-based medical image registration via hybrid differential search algorithm

Image registration is the process of overlaying images of the same scene taken at different times by different sensors from different viewpoints. The cross-cumulative residual entropy (CCRE)-based medical image registration could achieve a high precision and a strong robustness performance. However, the optimization problem formulated by CCRE consists of some local extrema, especially for noise images. In order to address these difficulties, this article proposes a new optimization algorithm named hybrid differential search algorithm (HDSA) to optimize CCRE. As HDSA consists of simple control parameters, it is independent of the initial searching point. In addition, HDSA ameliorated the search method and the iterative conditions. As a result, the optimization process is more stable and efficient. Image registration experiments of HDSA are performed and compared with the conventional differential search algorithm (DSA) and adaptive differential evolution with optional external archive (JADE). The results show that HDSA does not only overcome the difficulties of sticking in the local extrema but also enhances the precision of registration. It is effective, robust, and fast for both the single-mode rigid medical image registration and the multispectral-mode rigid medical image registration.     

A medical image enhancement method using adaptive thresholding in NSCT domain combined unsharp masking

In the process of medical image formation, the medical image is often interfered by various factors, and it is deteriorated by some new noise that may reduce the quality of the obtained image, which affect the clinical diagnosis seriously. A new medical image enhancement method is proposed in this article. Firstly, the initial medical image is decomposed into the NSCT domain with a low‐frequency sub‐band, and several high‐frequency sub‐bands. Secondly, linear transformation is adopted for the coefficients of the low‐frequency sub‐band. An adaptive thresholding method is used for denoising the coefficients of the high‐frequency sub‐bands. Then, all sub‐bands were reconstructed into spatial domains using the inverse transformation of NSCT. Finally, unsharp masking was used to enhance the details of the reconstructed image. The results of experiment show that the proposed method is superior to other methods in image entropy, EME, and PSNR. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 25, 199–205, 2015     

Fusion of MRI and CT images using guided image filter and image statistics

In medical imaging using different modalities such as MRI and CT, complementary information of a targeted organ will be captured. All the necessary information from these two modalities has to be integrated into a single image for better diagnosis and treatment of a patient. Image fusion is a process of combining useful or complementary information from multiple images into a single image. In this article, we present a new weighted average fusion algorithm to fuse MRI and CT images of a brain based on guided image filter and the image statistics. The proposed algorithm is as follows: detail layers are extracted from each source image by using guided image filter. Weights corresponding to each source image are calculated from the detail layers with help of image statistics. Then a weighted average fusion strategy is implemented to integrate source image information into a single image. Fusion performance is assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Proposed method is compared with the traditional and recent image fusion methods. Results showed that our algorithm yields superior performance.     

基于小波系数邻域特征的CT与MR图像融合方法

提出一种基于小波变换的像素级CT,MR医学图像融合方法,利用离散小波变换分别将两幅源图像进行多尺度分解,再用不同的小波系数邻域特征指导高频分量和低频分量的小波系数的融合,低频分量采用邻域方差指导,高频分量采用邻域能量指导,最后根据融合图像的各小波系数重构融合图像.实验表明:不论从主观感受,还是采用信息熵和平均梯度两项指标作为客观定量评价标准,该方法都优于传统的融合方法,获得的融合图像有效地综合了CT与MR图像信息,能够同时清晰地显示脑部骨组织和软组织.     

The new block pixel sort algorithm for TVC-encrypted medical image

To transfer the medical image from one place to another place or to store a medical image in a particular place with secure manner has become a challenge. In order to solve those problems, the medical image is encrypting and compressing before sending or saving at a place. In this paper, a new block pixel sort algorithm has been proposed for compressing the encrypted medical image. The encrypted medical image acts as an input for this compression process. During the compression, encrypted secret image E₁₂(;) is compressed by the pixel block sort encoding (PBSE). The image is divided into four identical blocks, similar to 2×2 matrix. The minimum occurrence pixel(s) are found out from every block and the positions of the minimum occurrence pixel(s) are found using the verdict occurrence process. The pixel positions are shortened with the help of a shortening process. The features (symbols and shortened pixel positions) are extracted from each block and the extracted features are stored in a particular place, and the values of these features put together as a compressed medical image. The next process of PBSE is pixel block short decoding (PBSD) process. In the decoding process, there are nine steps involved while decompressing the compressed encrypted medical image. The feature extraction value of compressed information is found out from the feature extraction, the symbols are split and the positions are shortened in a separate manner. The position is retrieved from the rescheduled process and the symbols and reconstructed positions of the minimum occurrence pixels are taken block wise. Every symbol is placed based on the position in each block: if the minimum occurrence pixel is ‘0’, then the rest of the places are automatically allocated as ‘1’ or if the minimum occurrence pixel is ‘1’ the remaining place is automatically allocated as ‘0’. Both the blocks are merged as per order 2×2. The final output is the reconstructed encrypted medical image. From this compression method, we can achieve the high compression ratio, minimum time, less compression size and lossless compression, which are the things experimented and proved.     

一种微弱图像增强技术研究

对传统灰度图像直方图均衡化方法进行了深入研究,提出了一种基于正切函数调整的直方图均衡化改进算法,该方法有利于提高图像的对比度,达到对图像判别的要求。 算法实现的关键是最优参数选择,因此采用了一种便于选择最优参数的方法。 另外,将图像相似程度应用于了增强效果的评价,为图像增强的实验分析提供了新的方法,具有一定的科学性与可行性。 实验结果表明,该算法比现有的图像增强方法效果更好。