Linear Structure Extraction in Medical Imaging
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Existing radiation photography image processing techniques fail to clearly enhance guide wires in images, resulting in low visual recognition and inability to effectively process linear structural objects, leading to faintly incorporated guide wires remaining unchanged.
Innovation Solution
An image processing apparatus that evaluates pixels to identify linear structural objects, produces direction images, difference images, and extraction images using evaluation and direction images, and optionally employs reduction, analysis with Hessian matrices, anisotropic filters, and morphologic processing to enhance visual recognition.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Object-affected harmful factors
If statistical noise elimination processing is applied to the image, then noise is removed and image clarity improves, but the guide wire (linear structural object) is not enhanced and remains faintly incorporated
Solution Approach 1:
The image processing is segmented into multiple specialized stages: noise elimination processing, linear structural object extraction processing, and enhancement processing. Each stage targets specific features independently, allowing noise to be removed while preserving and enhancing linear structures like guide wires through dedicated extraction algorithms.
Solution Approach 2:
Different processing methods are applied to different regions and features within the image. Linear structural objects receive specialized enhancement processing with adjusted contrast and brightness parameters, while other regions undergo standard noise elimination. This localized quality enhancement ensures guide wires are prominently enhanced without uniformly processing the entire image.
2Reliability
If conventional image processing is used, then general image quality is maintained, but linear structural objects cannot be specifically enhanced and remain difficult to recognize
Solution Approach 1:
The processing system dynamically adjusts parameters based on detected linear structural objects. After extracting linear structures through edge detection and Hough transform algorithms, the system applies adaptive contrast enhancement and brightness adjustment specifically to these extracted regions, making guide wires dynamically prominent while maintaining overall image quality.
Solution Approach 2:
The system changes processing parameters selectively for linear structural objects versus the rest of the image. Extraction images of linear structures undergo parameter adjustments including contrast enhancement, brightness modification, and sharpness improvement, while the original image maintains its natural appearance. This parameter differentiation resolves the contradiction between maintaining overall quality and enhancing specific features.
Data Source
AI summary
An image process apparatus is operative to obtain an image with high visual recognition property. A linear structural object incorporated into the original image is distinguished by two methods. A first method produces an evaluation image (P3) that evaluates whether each pixel is a linear structural object in the original image. A second method produces the difference image (P6) incorporating a linear structural object by obtaining the difference between the linear structural object incorporated into the original image and the portion other than the linear structural object. Since the linear structural object in the original image is extracted from an original image (P0) holding the contrasting density in the original image based on the two images related to the linear structural object produced by such different methods, and the apparatus provides an image having high visual recognition property.