Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers (전자공학회논문지)

The Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers (대한전자공학회)
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Background Removal and ROI Segmentation Algorithms for Chest X-ray Images

흉부 엑스레이 영상에서 배경 제거 및 관심영역 분할 기법

  • Received : 2015.06.16
  • Accepted : 2015.10.29
  • Published : 2015.11.25
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Abstract

This paper proposes methods to remove background area and segment region of interest (ROI) in chest X-ray images. Conventional algorithms to improve detail or contrast of images normally utilize brightness and frequency information. If we apply such algorithms to the entire images, we cannot obtain reliable visual quality due to unnecessary information such as background area. So, we propose two effective algorithms to remove background and segment ROI from the input X-ray images. First, the background removal algorithm analyzes the histogram distribution of the input X-ray image. Next, the initial background is estimated by a proper thresholding on histogram domain, and it is removed. Finally, the body contour or background area is refined by using a popular guided filter. On the other hand, the ROI, i.e., lung segmentation algorithm first determines an initial bounding box using the lung's inherent location information. Next, the main intensity value of the lung is computed by vertical cumulative sum within the initial bounding box. Then, probable outliers are removed by using a specific labeling and the pre-determined background information. Finally, a bounding box including lung is obtained. Simulation results show that the proposed background removal and ROI segmentation algorithms outperform the previous works.

본 논문은 흉부 엑스레이 영상에서 배경 제거 및 관심 영역을 분할하는 기법을 제안한다. 일반적으로 화질 개선 기법을 적용할 때 영상의 밝기 정보나 주파수 정보를 이용하여 영상 선명도와 대비를 개선하는 방법을 사용한다. 이러한 기법을 엑스레이 영상 전체에 적용하는 경우 배경과 같은 영상의 불필요한 정보 때문에 좋은 성능을 얻기 어렵다. 그래서 본 논문은 사용자가 원하는 영역에만 화질 개선 기법을 적용할 수 있도록 배경 제거 및 관심 영역 (ROI)을 분할하는 방법을 제안한다. 배경 제거를 위해 먼저 원본 영상의 히스토그램 분포를 분석하고 문턱치 처리로 몸체와 배경을 일차적으로 분리한다. 다음으로 유도 필터 (guided filter)를 이용하여 몸체 경계 혹은 배경 경계를 보정한다. 관심 영역 분할을 위해서는 먼저 폐의 위치 정보를 이용하여 폐의 주 밝기 값을 찾는다. 이를 이용하여 문턱치 처리를 한 후 번호 매김과 상기 배경 정보를 이용하여 분류 이외의 것을 제거한다. 마지막으로 폐만 검출된 이진영상을 통해 경계 상자 영역을 생성한다. 모의실험을 통해 제안하는 기법의 우수성을 검증하였다.

Keywords

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