title: Automatic Contrast Enhancement of Brain MR Images Using Hierarchical Correlation Histogram Analysis.
abstract: Parkinson's disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that has a higher probability of occurrence in middle-aged and older adults than in the young. With the use of a computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) system, abnormal cell regions can be identified, and this identification can help medical personnel to evaluate the chance of disease. This study proposes a hierarchical correlation histogram analysis based on the grayscale distribution degree of pixel intensity by constructing a correlation histogram, that can improves the adaptive contrast enhancement for specific objects. The proposed method produces significant results during contrast enhancement preprocessing and facilitates subsequent CAD processes, thereby reducing recognition time and improving accuracy. The experimental results show that the proposed method is superior to existing methods by using two estimation image quantitative methods of PSNR and average gradient values. Furthermore, the edge information pertaining to specific cells can effectively increase the accuracy of the results.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 10617 Taiwan.
authors.forename: Chiao-Min
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, 40227 Taiwan.
authors.forename: Chih-Cheng
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Imaging, Chung Shan Medical University Hospital, Taichung, 40201 Taiwan.
authors.forename: Ming-Chi
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, 40227 Taiwan.
authors.forename: Gwoboa
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Horng
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taichung University of Science and Technology, 129, Sec. 3, San-min Rd., Taichung, 40401 Taiwan, ROC.
authors.forename: Hsien-Chu
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taichung University of Science and Technology, 129, Sec. 3, San-min Rd., Taichung, 40401 Taiwan, ROC.
authors.forename: Shih-Hua
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Hsueh
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taichung University of Science and Technology, 129, Sec. 3, San-min Rd., Taichung, 40401 Taiwan, ROC.
authors.forename: His-Yun
authors.initials: HY
authors.lastname: Ho
keywords: Correlation histogram; Image enhancement; Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); Parkinson’s disease