Characterization of digital intra-oral dental radiographs based on image enhancement algorithms (IEAs) / Siti Arpah Ahmad

The advancement in medical imaging modality has made it possible to produce many types of digital medical images. However, many of these images suffer from low contrasts and noise which make it difficult to identify disease characteristics. Furthermore, the quality and properties of the final display of medical images are often inadequate for diagnostic purposes. Currently limited work has been done in enhancing the pathological features to detect and interpret abnormalities that are required to clearly diagnose dental diseases. Low contrasts in medical image leads to disagreement and might cause misdiagnosis and differential diagnosis. Dentists come from different background in terms of experience, place of study, method of practices and emotional quotient. These are some of the factors that may cause difference of opinion among dentists. The onset of digital imaging modality has made it possible to apply image processing algorithms to overcome the short comings of medical images such as noise, blurring and low contrast. This involves changes in appearance of the original image. The acceptance of dentists towards these changes are subjective thus may result in variation of opinion. To identify the most appropriate appearance of image which is subjectively agreeable to the dentists is the initial stage towards determining the characteristic required in the objective measurement. Therefore, this research focuses on identifying objective measurements based on dentists’ subjective evaluation on abnormalities in jaw area. The methodology consists of three phases; image processing experimental design, subjective evaluation and objective evaluation. Theses phases formed a new subjective-objective based image enhancement (SOIE) framework…