ABSTRACT

Contrast is a measure of the variation in intensity or gray value in a specified region of an image. In all applications concerning image acquisition, followed by processing of images, successful pre-processing is of the essence. Every sensor has its own characteristics, but in general the quality of the acquired MR image is fairly poor. Overall grayscale intensity variations, poor contrast and noisy background are the frequently encountered issues. The Rational Unsharp Masking method is the one introduced here to improve the quality of the MR image. It is demonstrated, that the proposed method has much reduced noise sensitivity than another polynomial operator, Cubic Unsharp masking and number of approaches devised to improve the perceived quality of an image. This algorithm has been tested for various slices of axial, sagittal and coronal sections of MR image. The results confirm the ability of the algorithm to produce better quality images, helpful to have effective diagnosis.

Keywords: - Image enhancement, Magnetic Resonance Image , Rational filters, Unsharp Masking.