A Framework for Cross-Modality Guided Contrast Enhancement of CT Liver Using MRI

In liver medical imaging, physicians always detect, monitor, and characterize liver diseases by visually assessing of liver medical images. Computed Tomographic (CT) imaging is considered as one of the efficient medical imaging modalities in diagnosis of various human diseases. However, imprecise visualization and low contrast are the drawbacks that limit its utility. In this paper, a novel approach of multimodal liver image contrast enhancement is proposed. The idea behind the proposed approach is utilizing MRI scan as guide to exploit the diversity information extracted to enhance the structures in CT modal of liver. The proposed enhancement technique consists of two phases of enhancement to assess local contrast of the input images. In the first phase, the two image modalities are converted to the same range as the range of MRI and CT are different. Then, we did transformation of CT image so that its histogram matches the histogram of MRI. Second, the adaptive gamma correction-based histogram modification is utilized to get enhanced CT image. The subjective and objective experimental results indicated that the proposed scheme generates significantly enhanced liver CT.

A Curvature-Based Multidirectional Local Contrast Method for Star Detection of a Star Sensor

Stray light, such as sunlight, moonlight, and earth-atmosphere light, can bring about light spots in backgrounds, and it affects the star detection of star sensors. To overcome this problem, this paper proposes a star detection algorithm (CMLCM) with multidirectional local contrast based on curvature. It regards the star image as a spatial surface and analyzes the difference in the curvature between the star and the background. It uses a facet model to represent the curvature and calculate the second-order derivatives in four directions. According to the characteristic of the star and the complex background, it enhances the target and suppresses the complex background by a new calculation method of a local contrast map. Finally, it divides the local contrast map into multiple 256 × 256 sub-regions for a more effective threshold segmentation. The experimental results indicated that the CMLCM algorithm could effectively detect a large number of accurate stars under stray light interference, and the detection rate was higher than other compared algorithms with a lower false alarm rate.

Relationship Between Facial Areas With the Greatest Increase in Non-local Contrast and Gaze Fixations in Recognizing Emotional Expressions

The aim of our study was to analyze gaze fixations in recognizing facial emotional expressions in comparison with o the spatial distribution of the areas with the greatest increase in the total (nonlocal) luminance contrast. It is hypothesized that the most informative areas of the image that getting more of the observer’s attention are the areas with the greatest increase in nonlocal contrast. The study involved 100 university students aged 19-21 with normal vision. 490 full-face photo images were used as stimuli. The images displayed faces of 6 basic emotions (Ekman’s Big Six) as well as neutral (emotionless) expressions. Observer’s eye movements were recorded while they were the recognizing expressions of the shown faces. Then, using a developed software, the areas with the highest (max), lowest (min), and intermediate (med) increases in the total contrast in comparison with the surroundings were identified in the stimulus images at different spatial frequencies. Comparative analysis of the gaze maps with the maps of the areas with min, med, and max increases in the total contrast showed that the gaze fixations in facial emotion classification tasks significantly coincide with the areas characterized by the greatest increase in nonlocal contrast. Obtained results indicate that facial image areas with the greatest increase in the total contrast, which preattentively detected by second-order visual mechanisms, can be the prime targets of the attention.

Modified method of image histogram hyperbolization

One of the methods to improve image quality, which consists in increasing the resolution of image details by contrast enhancement, is to hyperbolize the image histogram. Herewith this increase in local contrast is carried out indirectly. It is due to the nature of the change in the histogram of the transformed image. Usually the histogram of the input image is transformed so that it has a uniform distribution, which illustrates the same contribution of pixels gray level to the image structure. However, there is a method that is based on modeling the human visual system, which is characterized by the logarithmic dependence of the human reaction to light stimulation. It consists in the hyperbolic transformation of the histogram of the image. Then, due to its perception by the visual system, at its output, during the psychophysical perception of the image, an approximately uniform distribution of the histogram of the levels of gray pixels is formed. But the drawback is the lack of effectiveness of this approach for excessively light or dark images. The modified method of image histogram hyperbolization has been developed. It is based on the power transformation of the probability distribution function, which in the discrete version of the images is approximated by a normalized cumulative histogram. The power index is a control parameter of the transformation. to improve the darkened images we use the value of the control parameter less than one, and for light images more than one. The effectiveness of the proposed method is shown by examples.

A Novel Method for the Enhancement of Composite Materials’ Terahertz Image Using Unsharp Masking and Guided Filtering Technology

When terahertz imaging technology is used for the nondestructive testing of composite materials, the signal is often affected by the experimental environment and internal noise of the system, as well as the absorption and scattering effect of the tested materials. The obtained image has degradation phenomena such as low contrast, poor resolution of small targets and blurred details. In order to improve the image quality, this paper proposes a novel method for the enhancement of composite materials’ terahertz image by using unsharp masking and guided filtering technology. The method includes the processing steps of hard threshold shrinkage denoising based on discrete wavelet transform, amplitude imaging, unsharp masking, guided filtering, contrast stretching, and pseudo-color mapping. In this paper, these steps are reasonably combined and optimized to obtain the final resulting image. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, a 150–220 GHz high frequency terahertz frequency modulated radar imaging system was used to image three commonly used sandwich structure composites, and the enhancement processing were carried out. The resulting images with significantly enhanced contrast, detail resolution and edge information were obtained, and the prefabricated defects were all detected; Five objective evaluation indexes including standard deviation, mean gradient, information entropy, energy gradient and local contrast were used to compare and analyze the processing results of different image enhancement methods. The subjective and objective evaluation results showed that the proposed method can effectively suppress the noise in terahertz detection signals, enhance the ability of defect detection and positioning, and improve the accuracy of detection. The proposed method in this paper is expected to play a positive role in improving the practicability of terahertz imaging detection technology and expanding its application fields.

Computer simulation of adapting the object image selection method to video surveillance conditions

The article deals with the issues of computer modeling of methods for selecting images of objects against a non-uniform background. A test video sequence with given background and object parameters is considered, which provides imitation of one of the special cases of video surveillance conditions, namely, the convergence of the video surveillance point and the object. The issues of adaptation of the compensation selection method to the specified conditions of video surveillance are discussed. Examples of test images and graphs of dependences of the probability of correct determination of coordinates depending on the value of the local contrast of the object in relation to the background, obtained by computer simulation are given.

Smoke Removal and Image Enhancement of Laparoscopic Images by An Artificial Multi-Exposure Image Fusion Method

In laparoscopic surgery, image quality is often degraded by surgical smoke or by side effects of the illumination system, such as reflections, specularities, and non-uniform illumination. The degraded images complicate the work of the surgeons and may lead to errors in image-guided surgery. Existing enhancement algorithms mainly focus on enhancing global image contrast, overlooking local contrast. Here, we propose a new Patch Adaptive Structure Decomposition utilizing the Multi-Exposure Fusion (PASD-MEF) technique to enhance the local contrast of laparoscopic images for better visualization. The set of under-exposure level images are obtained from a single input blurred image by using gamma correction. Spatial linear saturation is applied to enhance image contrast and to adjust the image saturation. The Multi-Exposure Fusion (MEF) is used on a series of multi-exposure images to obtain a single clear and smoke-free fused image. MEF is applied by using adaptive structure decomposition on all image patches. Image entropy based on the texture energy is used to calculate image energy strength. The texture entropy energy determined the patch size that is useful in the decomposition of image structure. The proposed method effectively eliminate smoke and enhance the degraded laparoscopic images. The qualitative results showed that the visual quality of the resultant images is improved and smoke-free. Furthermore, the quantitative scores computed of the metrics: FADE, Blur, JNBM, and Edge Intensity are significantly improved as compared to other existing methods.