Utility of image enhancement methods in three-dimensional ultrasound reconstruction

A computer algorithm utilizing image enhancement methods to simplify the extraction of three-dimensional (3-D) volumes from ultrasound images has been developed. The contrast of the image was increased by using histogram sliding and stretching and adaptive histogram equalization to facilitate interactive thresholding. Artifacts were removed while anatomic details were preserved through the use of mathematical morphologic filtering. Median filtering helped to remove remaining noise and smooth edges. Binary masks defining the object borders were created from the enhanced images and used to extract the object from the original data set so that original backscatter texture was preserved. The method is demonstrated with images acquired in vitro and in vivo.