Synthesis-based scalable image enhancement for digital radiography

The ability to resolve fine picture detail is of paramount importance in medical imaging system when it comes to view small tissue, bone structure and anatomy in x-ray images. In order to enhance diagnostic information and suppress irrelevant detail, in this paper, we present a new digital x-ray imaging processing system with the property of scalability and adaptability. First, a new optimum contrast enhancement algorithm is proposed for display. The adaptive detection of the region-of-interest is developed. Second, a so called "scalable edge enhancement algorithm" is proposed to improve the image quality for showing subtle structures of the digital x-ray images. The advantage of the scheme is demonstrated by the experiments on 200 x-ray images, in which different parts of human body structures are captured.