Speckle reduction in ultrasound medical images using adaptive filter based on second order statistics

This article discusses an adaptive filtering technique for reducing speckle using second order statistics of the speckle pattern in ultrasound medical images. Several region-based adaptive filter techniques have been developed for speckle noise suppression, but there are no specific criteria for selecting the region growing size in the post processing of the filter. The size appropriate for one local region may not be appropriate for other regions. Selection of the correct region size involves a trade-off between speckle reduction and edge preservation. Generally, a large region size is used to smooth speckle and a small size to preserve the edges into an image. In this paper, a smoothing procedure combines the first order statistics of speckle for the homogeneity test and second order statistics for selection of filters and desired region growth. Grey level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) is calculated for every region during the region contraction and region growing for second order statistics. Further, these GLCM features determine the appropriate filter for the region smoothing. The performance of this approach is compared with the aggressive region-growing filter (ARGF) using edge preservation and speckle reduction tests. The processed image results show that the proposed method effectively reduces speckle noise and preserves edge details.     

Gray-scale edge detection for gastric tumor pathologic cell images by morphological analysis

For the purpose of analyzing gastric tumor pathologic cell images, a novel method is developed with gray-scale edge detection of mathematical morphology in this study. In combination with texture features of the image under investigation, this paper works on edge detection with various structuring elements (SEs) and gray-scale values. The results of the experiment are presented, and we found several advantages by using the morphological edge detection scheme for the analysis of gastric tumor pathologic cell images. Meanwhile, the results of the binary morphological edge detection are given for comparison.     

Analysis and recognition of touching cell images based on morphological structures

Automated analysis and recognition of cell-nuclear phases using fluorescence microscopy images play an important role for high-content screening. A major task of automated imaging based high-content screening is to segment and reconstruct each cell from the touching cell images. In this paper we present new useful method for recognizing morphological structural models of touching cells, detecting segmentation points, determining the number of segmented cells in touching cell image, finding the related data of segmented cell arcs and reconstructing segmented cells. The conceptual frameworks are based on the morphological structures where a series of structural points and their morphological relationships are established. Experiment results have shown the efficient application of the new method for analysis and recognition of touching cell images of high-content screening.     

Fuzzy entropy based interactive enhancement of radiographic images

In certain radiographic images, fuzziness exists due to the vague nature of image characteristics and limitations of visual perception. Accordingly, a gap exists between the information content of an image and the information that can be retrieved. In this paper, a new fuzzy logic based intensification operator has been proposed for enhancement of images. For applying the operator effectively, selection of crossover point is critical. In this paper, the concept of fuzzy entropy has been proposed for objective selection of crossover point. Owing to semantic nature of information content, the methodology has a provision to change levels of enhancement interactively, to help in retrieving the information as required. The effectiveness of the methodology has been demonstrated. Comparison of the results with the Zadeh's INT operator and conventional histogram equalization techniques has established its superiority.     

Artifact removal and texture-based rendering for visualization of 3D fetal ultrasound images

Convenient and non-invasive ultrasonography has become an essential tool for diagnosing fetal abnormalities. However, the noisy and blurry nature of sonographic data poses a challenge. To improve object visualization, we first develop a modified diffusion filter that utilizes the local standard deviation and edge of local-average-difference to define an adaptive edge stopping function in diffusion filtering. The proposed method overcomes the drawbacks of traditional diffusion filters and shows good results in comparative experiments. Moreover, we propose a novel light absorbing function to remove large regions of interface artifacts. An advanced imaging mode, called texture-based rendering, is employed to provide more realistic rendering. Experimental results show that the proposed methods enhance final image quality in 3D fetal sonograms.     

基于特征点的人体红外图像自动分割技术

目的医学红外人体图像区域分割是大规模医学红外图像处理的关键步骤。为快速有效地获取医学红外图像中的人体信息,本文提出一种在医学红外图像中自动提取并划分人体区域的方法。方法由红外热像仪在静室中采集人的裸体红外图像,然后通过对红外人体图像灰度分布特征分析而取得的阈值来获取人体区域,以人体横向距离(宽度)函数结合人体红外图像中的特殊方向亮带的识别,提取人体的特征点,并通过特征点对人体区域进行分割。结果对来自8人的72幅图像进行验证,其中64幅可以正确分割,证明该方法可以对直立姿势的红外人体图像进行自动区域分割与提取。结论该红外人体图像区域自动分割算法可为基于红外图像的疾病筛查及计算机辅助诊断提供技术基础。     

Quality evaluation of ultrasound imaging in the carotid artery based on normalization and speckle reduction filtering

Image quality is important when evaluating ultrasound images of the carotid for the assessment of the degree of atherosclerotic disease, or when transferring images through a telemedicine channel, and/or in other image processing tasks. The objective of this study was to investigate the usefulness of image quality evaluation based on image quality metrics and visual perception, in ultrasound imaging of the carotid artery after normalization and speckle reduction filtering. Image quality was evaluated based on statistical and texture features, image quality evaluation metrics, and visual perception evaluation made by two experts. These were computed on 80 longitudinal ultrasound images of the carotid bifurcation recorded from two different ultrasound scanners, the HDI ATL-3000 and the HDI ATL-5000 scanner, before (NF) and after (DS) speckle reduction filtering, after normalization (N), and after normalization and speckle reduction filtering (NDS). The results of this study showed that: (1) the normalized speckle reduction, NDS, images were rated visually better on both scanners; (2) the NDS images showed better statistical and texture analysis results on both scanners; (3) better image quality evaluation results were obtained between the original (NF) and normalized (N) images, i.e. NF–N, for both scanners, followed by the NF–DS images for the ATL HDI-5000 scanner and the NF–DS on the HDI ATL-3000 scanner; (4) the ATL HDI-5000 scanner images have considerable higher entropy than the ATL HDI-3000 scanner and thus more information content. However, based on the visual evaluation by the two experts, both scanners were rated similarly. The above findings are also in agreement with the visual perception evaluation, carried out by the two vascular experts. The results of this study showed that ultrasound image normalization and speckle reduction filtering are important preprocessing steps favoring image quality, and should be further investigated.     

An improved matched filter for blood vessel detection of digital retinal images

The matched filter has been widely used in the detection of blood vessels of the human retina digital image. In this paper, the matched filter response to the detection of blood vessels is increased by proposing better filter parameters. These filter parameters are found by using an optimization procedure on 20 retina images of the DRIVE database. Comparisons with other approaches show that the matched filter that uses the newly found parameters outperforms the matched filter that uses the classical filter parameters as well as some vessel detection techniques. A technique is also discussed to find the best threshold value for the continuous matched filter output image and hence the best segmented vessel image.     

基于数学形态学的CT图像肝脏肿瘤提取研究

目的 肝脏肿瘤的提取是肝脏三维可视化、手术规划和模拟的基础,而当前肿瘤分割存在干预过多和分割效果不佳的问题.方法 本文通过对腹部CT图像进行高斯平滑以去除图像噪声和细密纹理,计算出图像的形态学梯度并用高、低帽变换进行增强,再根据用户选择点计算内部和外部标记符,然后基于控制标记符的分水岭算法分割图像,提取出腹部CT图像中的病变组织.结果 实验结果表明,该算法能够在较少的人工干预下快速分割出肝脏病变组织.结论 该算法实现了腹部CT图像中肝脏病变组织的提取.     

Analysis of SPECT brain images for the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease based on NMF for feature extraction

This letter presents a novel computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) technique for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) based on non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) analysis applied to single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) images. A baseline normalized SPECT database containing normalized data for both AD patients and healthy reference patients is selected for this study. The SPECT database is analyzed by applying the Fisher discriminant ratio (FDR) for feature selection and NMF for feature extraction of relevant components of each subject. The main goal of these preprocessing steps is to reduce the large dimensionality of the input data and to relieve the so called “curse of dimensionality” problem. The resulting NMF-transformed set of data, which contains a reduced number of features, is classified by means of a support vector machines based classification technique (SVM). The proposed NMF + SVM method yields up to 94% classification accuracy, with high sensitivity and specificity values (upper than 90%), becoming an accurate method for SPECT image classification. For the sake of completeness, comparison between another recently developed principal component analysis (PCA) plus SVM method and the proposed method is also provided, yielding results for the NMF + SVM approach that outperform the behavior of the reference PCA + SVM or conventional voxel-as-feature (VAF) plus SVM methods.     

基于医学图像的人体组织有限元模型的建立方法

在医学图像处理、分析和一些成像算法重构中,建立准确的人体组织轮廓外形和有限元模型对于图像分析和改善重构算法的性能、提高分析和重构结果的准确性具有重要作用。本文使用图像处理与曲线拟合的办法,提取CT图像中的真实人体边界,进行分层的有限元剖分与相关参数设置,获得基于真实人体的有限元重构模型。该方法构建的有限元重构模型已在医学图像处理实际工作中得到了初步的应用。     

An image analysis pipeline for the semi-automated analysis of clinical fMRI images based on freely available software

The technique of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) has evolved in the last 15 years from a research concept into a clinically relevant medical procedure. In this study, an efficient, semi-automated and cost-effective solution for the analysis of fMRI images acquired in a clinical setting is presented relying heavily on open source software. The core of the pipeline is the software Analysis of Functional NeuroImages (AFNI, National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)) combined with K-PACS and ImageJ. Its application is illustrated with clinical fMRI exams and with a research study involving comparing subjects diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and age-matched controls.