A method for evaluation of enhancement operations in two-dimensional echocardiographic images.
A means of estimating the degree of enhancement of structure and suppression of background noise in filtered two-dimensional echocardiographic images is described. The method is termed the peak-to-background ratio. To test the method, two-dimensional short-axis echocardiographic images were enhanced with Laplacian operations of increasing mask size. There was excellent correlation between the calculated peak-to-background ratio and the subjective opinion of trained echocardiographers. Furthermore, radial length measurements made from images that were thought to be optimally enhanced by the peak-to-background ratio calculation showed the lowest interobserver mean differences. We conclude that the peak-to-background ratio does reflect improvement in characteristics of the image that favor more precise measurement (amplification of peaks and suppression of background) and can be used to help guide a dynamic approach to image processing.
Geiser
E A
EA
Echocardiography Research Laboratory, College of Medicine, University of Florida, Gainesville.
Wilson
D C
DC
Gibby
G L
GL
Billett
J
J
Conetta
D A
DA
D000703:Analog-Digital Conversion; D004452:Echocardiography / Q000379:methods*; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009200:Myocardial Contraction; D015588:Observer Variation; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted