Modified Operators for Digital Image Enhancement of Radiograph Films Digitized by Low Cost Flatbed Scanner

Abstract

Digitizing radiograph films gives the centers and the departments of radiology the chance to get benefits of treating, transmitting and archiving digital images of patients. These processes are the back pone of teleradiology which can be very helpful for third world countries. In this work three radiograph films with different quality have been scanned by low cost flatbed scanner instead of proper expensive films scanner to minimize costs. The resulted images have been dark with so poor contrast. Standard linear and nonlinear spatial sharpening operators have been used to treat these defects. Only Nonlinear sharpening operator shows amount of improvement depending on the quality and contents of the image. Then five linear spatial sharpening operators have been developed to modify the contrast and increase sharpening of the images. Three of these operators achieve acceptable enhancement for all images and one of them achieves relative enhancement depending on the quality of the treated image. Smoothing operators have been used in addition to the modified operators to study the possibility of improvement. Results show relative improvement depending in the contents of the treated image. Results of the work show possibility of using the modified operators to get acceptable quality of images for the scanned films with low costs of resources.