Chest radiograph enhancement using the weighted unsharp mask

Abstract

This paper defines the weighted unsharp mask image enhancement technique and illustrates its use applied to the image processing of chest radiographs. This technique is a generalisation of the simple unsharp mask, the variable threshold zonal filter and the gradient inverse weighted mean. It has the property of sharpening or de-blurring an image while controlling two characteristic degradations of the normal unsharp mask, namely the emphasis of low level noise and the over-enhancement of well defined edges. © 1982, SPIE.