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Medical Image Enhancement Using Modified Color Histogram Equalization

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Abstract

Image enhancement is crucial in medical imaging. Histogram equalization is an image enhancement technique employed to enhance image contrast, which has become a vital part of general and medical image processing. Although it is widely studied and applied, traditional histogram equalization achieves poor image enhancement results because it does not consider hue preservation. This study proposes a novel image enhancement method that incorporates hue preservation to address this problem. The results show that, compared with the equalized image of each RGB color channel using the traditional method, the proposed method yields superior results, with higher accuracy in terms of mean squared error and peak signal-to-noise ratio, when applied to retinal and prostate cancer images. This can effectively assist physicians in making the proper judgment.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to express their sincere appreciation for Grants partially from MOST103-2410-H-194-070-MY2 and MOST104-2622-E-194-003-CC2, Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Management and Advanced Institute of Manufacturing with High-tech Innovations, National Chung Cheng University, 168 University Rd. Sec. 1, Minhsiung Township, Chiayi County, 621, Taiwan

    Wei-Yen Hsu & Ching-Yao Chou

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  1. Wei-Yen Hsu
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  2. Ching-Yao Chou
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Correspondence to Wei-Yen Hsu.

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Hsu, WY., Chou, CY. Medical Image Enhancement Using Modified Color Histogram Equalization. J. Med. Biol. Eng. 35, 580–584 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40846-015-0078-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40846-015-0078-8

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