Methodology of a real-time quality control for the multispectral digital colposcope (MDC).
BACKGROUND
The diagnostic ability of algorithms developed for the Multispectral Digital Colposcope (MDC) is highly dependent on the quality of the image. The field of objective medical image quality analysis has great potential but has not been well exploited. Various researchers have reported different measures of image quality but with an existence of a reference image. The quality of an image can be attributed to several sources of errors, a few of which would be inclusion of presence of extraneous components, improper illumination, or an image out of focus. This can be due to motion artifact or the region of interest out of the focal plane.


METHODS
With spectroscopic measurements, assessment of data quality has been used by our group in the past to avoid hardware errors at the time of acquisition. We are currently developing algorithms that will help identify hardware and acquisition errors to the clinician in under a few seconds.


RESULTS
Minimizing these errors not only provides quality images for a diagnostic algorithm, but reduces the necessity for complex and time intensive post-processing software for enhancing the images.


CONCLUSIONS
We propose a no reference image quality system specifically designed for MDC that can be modified to similar spectroscopic imaging applications.
Nakappan
Senthilnathan
S
Biomedical Engineering Center, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas 77030, USA.
Park
Sun Young
SY
Serachitopol
Dan
D
Price
Roderick
R
Cardeno
Mark
M
Au
Sylvia
S
Mackinnon
Nick
N
MacAulay
Calum
C
Follen
Michele
M
Pikkula
Brian M
BM
D000465:Algorithms; D020681:Colposcopes; D003127:Colposcopy / Q000379:methods* / Q000592:standards; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods; D011786:Quality Control; D002583:Uterine Cervical Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000473:pathology; D002578:Uterine Cervical Dysplasia / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000473:pathology