ABSTRACT

The various Medical images acquired directly from various

instruments are in the AVI format, which reduces the easy control of
image display without conversion to medical image standard, that is the
DICOM format. The purpose of this project is to develop software to
handle online data acquisition from medical equipments like Ultra Sound
machine, control the display rate, convert the AVI image acquired from the
Medical equipment directly to DICOM image with patient’s detail’s got from
the user, freeze the AVI image frame of interest, convert the freezed AVI
frame to Bitmap image, convert this Bitmap image to DICOM image with
patient’s details. This software is highly reliable, efficiently handles
memory and very user friendly.

Medical equipments like Ultra Sound, CT etc… have images at

their output in the AVI file format, which are acquired with the respective
probes. These AVI images acquired are stored. The software captures this
AVI image, displays them frame-by-frame in succession and converts
them to DICOM image with required patient’s details obtained from the
Specialist during conversion. The frame of interest can be freezed and
converted to Bitmap image, which can also be viewed on a separate
window with options to brighten, darken, change the color combination,
invert the image and restore the image. The converted DICOM image can
be viewed on any Standard DICOM viewer. Mostly all the DICOM viewer
will have provision to view the patient’s details entered during conversion.
OBJECTIVE

To help the doctor view a particular frame of interest captured

from a medical equipment which is usually an AVI image and to enable
the doctor to manipulate the frame for correct diagnosis and provide
efficient treatment.

MEDICAL IMAGING

From Ophthalmology and radiology to orthodontics, image

processing touches the medical field in many ways. The ability to visualize
and interactively manipulate three-dimensional objects derived from sets
of two-dimensional MRI and CAT scan (now shortened to CT scan) slices
has changed the way we deal with medicine. MRI stands for nuclear
magnetic resonance imaging.

DISADVANTAGE OF EXISTING SYSTEM

There is no AVI viewer that facilitates the doctors to

manipulate the medical image captured from the equipment. All AVI
viewers available just displays the frames in predetermined time
intervals and time of display of each frame cannot be controls as per
the physicians requirement. Frame at a particular given time can be
displayed but, it wont help the doctor capture the exact frame that is
required to find out the exact defect.
PROPOSED SYSTEM

This system will prove to be user friendly as this captures the

medical AVI image, grabs the required header information, converts them to
DICOM file format and stores it along with the patient’s details, physicians
details, etc… so that any physician can diagnose the patient without any other
further details. Moreover there are many DICOM viewer available with many
image processing provision.

Steps To Control Image

 Capture the image from an medical equipment which will normally

be in AVI (Audio/Video Interleaved) format.

 Analyze the header details of the AVI image.

 Copy the required header details into the DICOM header format.

 If the length of the header is greater than zero it is considered to be

valid.

 Find the start of frame in the AVI file, check for its length, if data is
valid copy the frame into DICOM file else skip the frame.

 View the DICOM file in appropriate DICOM viewer.

 IMAGE FILTERING

It is used to extract great amounts of information from our

images – information to which we don’t have access normally.
 Edge enhancement and sharpening
filters will bring out details in objects that we would not
otherwise have noticed.

 Averaging filters will smoothen the rough

and jagged edges in our images, making them more
appealing to the eye.

 Basic Statistical filter will remove much of

the noise found in our CCD scanned images.

 Gradient analysis will help us visualize

your image in a whole new light, greatly enhancing edges –
allowing us to create interesting embossed image effects.

 Special filters can help us identify certain

objects within an image.

 Low Pass filter passes on lower frequency

components of an image, while attenuating or rejecting the
higher frequency components.
 High Pass Filter is used to amplify the
high-frequency details found in an image, while the integrity
of low-frequency detail of the image remains.
 IMAGE PROCESSING:

Images are a vital and integral part of every day life. On

an individual, or person-to-person basis, images are used to reason,
interpret, illustrate, represent, memorize, educate, communicate, evaluate,
navigate, survey, entertain, etc. We do this continuously and almost
entirely without conscious effort. As man builds machines to facilitate his
ever more complex lifestyle, the only reason for NOT providing them with
the ability to exploit or transparently convey such images is a weakness of
available technology.

Applied Image Processing, in its broadest and most literal

interpretation, aims to address the goal of providing practical, reliable and
affordable means to allow machines to cope with images while assisting
man in his general endeavors.

By contrast, the term ‘image processing’ itself has become

firmly associated with the much more limited objective of modifying
images such that they are either:

a. Corrected for errors introduced during acquisition or

transmission (‘restoration’); or
b. Enhanced to overcome the weakness of human visual
system (‘enhancement’)
 As such, the discipline of ‘pure’ image processing may be
succinctly summarized as being concerned with

‘ a process which takes an image input and generates a

modified image output ’

Clearly then, other disciplines must be allied to pure image

processing in order to allow the stated goal to be achieved. ‘Pattern
classification’, which may be defined simply as

‘ a process which takes a feature vector input and

generates a class number output’

Confers the ability to identify or recognize objects and perform

sorting and some inspection tasks. ‘Artificial intelligence’, which may be
defined as

‘ a process which takes primitive data input and generates

a description, or understanding or a behavior as an output’

Confers a wide range of capability from description, in the

form of simple measurement of parameters for inspection purpose, to a
form of autonomy borne out of an ability to interpret the world through a
visual sense.

Theses disciplines have been evolving steadily and

independently ever since computer first became available, but only when
they are all effectively harnessed together do machines acquire anything
like the ability to exploit images in the way that humans do.
 In particular, the marriage of one, or both, of the first two
disciplines with artificial intelligence has given birth to the new, image
specific disciplines, namely ‘image analysis’, ‘scene analysis’ and ‘image
understanding’.

Image analysis is normally satisfied with quantifying data about

objects which are known to exist within a scene, or determining their
orientation, or recognizing them as one of a limited set of possible
prototypes. As such it is largely concerned with the development of the 2-
D applications, there is an undoubted need to extend this activity to the
description of 3-D relationships between objects within a 2-D view of the
real-world scene.

Scene analysis was the original term coined to describe this

extension of image analysis into the third dimension. Such work flourished
in the 1960s and was concerned with the rigorous visual analysis of three-
dimensional polyhedra (the so-called ‘blocks-world’), on the mistaken
premise that it would be a trivial matter to extend these concepts to the
analysis of natural scenes. The work was finally abandoned in the late
1970s when it was realized that the exploitation of application-dependent
constraints was no way to research general-purpose vision systems.

Consequently, the term scene analysis fell into disuse only to be

replaced by that of image understanding, which is more fundamentally
based upon the physics of image formation and the operation of human
visual system. It aims to allow machines to operate with ease in complex
natural environments, which feature partially occluded objects or,
ultimately, previously unseen objects.
 A broad overview of the literature in the field of machine
perception of images suggests the existence of two distinct ‘camps’ whose
followers, while sharing common roots, set out to achieve fundamentally
different objectives. We have chosen to label these camps as ‘computer
vision’ and ‘machine vision’, and feel that they are essentially
distinguished by their different approaches to the use of artificial
intelligence and the degree to which it is employed. (‘Robot vision’ was
also a popular alternative at one time, although it appears to be slowly
falling into disuse, perhaps because of rather unfortunate science-fiction
connotations.)

‘Computer vision’ is ultimately concerned with the goal of

enabling machines to understand the world that they see, in real-time and
without any form of human assistance. Thus, application-specific
constraints are rejected wherever possible as the world is ‘interpreted on-
line’. The complexity of this task is easily under-estimated by those who
take human vision for granted, but it is fraught with many immensely
difficult problems, and seriously hampered by inadequate processing
power.

‘Machine vision’ on the other hand, is concerned with utilizing

existing technology in the most effective way to endow a degree of
autonomy in specific applications. The universal nature of the computer
vision approach is sacrificed by deliberately exploiting application-specific
constraints. Thus knowledge about the world is ‘pre-complied’, or
engineered, into machine vision applications in order to provide cost-
effective solutions to real-world problems.
DIGITAL IMAGE ACQUISITION:

The general goal for image acquisition and processing is

to bring pictures into the computer domain of the computer, where they
can be displayed and then manipulated and altered for enhancement.
Four processes are involved in image acquisition:
 Input
 Display
 Manipulation
 Output

‘The transformation of optical image ata into an array of

numerical data which may be manipulation by a computer, so overall
aim of machine vision may be achieved’

In order to achieve this aim three major issues must be tackled

they are:
 Representation
 Transduction (or sensing)
 Digitizing
ARITHMETIC OPERATIONS ON IMAGES:

The arithmetic operations are absolutely essential for

calibration and flattening of the image in certain applications, particularly in
those applications that have a low signal. They are helpful tools for
enhancing an image. The basic arithmetic operations on images are:
 Addition
 Subtraction
 Multiplication
 Division

GEOMETRIC TRANSFORMATIONS:

Many times, to combine images taken at different times or by

different sources, we have to translate, rescale, and rotate the images. It
is usually important that the images match spatially. Without proper
registration of images before combination passes, most techniques for
image enhancement will actually degrade the images, losing important or
interesting information. The basic geometric transformations are:

 Translation
 Scaling/Zooming
 Resampling
 Rotation
 Flipping
ADVANCED GEOMETRIC TRANSFORMATIONS:

Have you ever wondered how those interesting special

effects that you see in movies and commercials were made? How in an
image can one person transform into another person or even an animal or
another entity? The two advanced geometric transformations are:
 Warping
 Morphing

Warping is a digital technique of distorting an image hence also

called geometric distortion. It has been used to create sophisticated
special effects I movies and television shows and in recent times in a
plethora of television commercials. They all use exotic computers and
custom software.

Morphing is an extension of warping and it is the

complete and smooth transformation from one image to another. This
technology, which traditionally has been prohibitively expensive, with a
little effort, can now be done on the desktop computer very cheaply.
Essentially, morphing involves two steps of warping, with a spline
interpolation between the initial images and the resultant image. Morphing
has you match key features such as the eyes, nose, mouth and other
details on both the exact same graphic space. Finally, a weighted average
is made of each step of transformation of the two wraps. For instance, to
morph a truck into a train, the train is first warped into the same shape as
the truck so that certain specific points, the windshields, headlights and
grills match as closely as possible.
IMAGE PREPOCESSING:
Image preprocessing seeks to modify and prepare the
pixel values of a digitized image to produce a form that is more suitable for
subsequent operations within the generic model. There are two major
branches of image preprocessing, namely

 Image Enhancements
 Image Restoration

Image enhancement attempts to improve the quality of image or

to emphasize particular aspects within the image. Such an objective
usually implies a degree of a degree of subjective judgment about the
resulting quality and will depend on the operation and the application in
question. The results may produce an image, which is quite different from
the original, and some aspects may have to be deliberately sacrificed in
order to improve others.

The aim of image restoration is to recover the original image

after ‘known’ effects such as geometric distortion within a camera system
have degraded it or blur caused by poor optics or movement. In all cases
a mathematical or statistical model of the degradation is required so that
restorative action can be taken.

Both types of operation take the acquired image array as input

and produce a modified image array as output, and they are thus
representative of pure ‘image processing’. Many of the common images
processing operations are essentially concerned with the application of
linear filtering to the original image ‘signal’.
REFERENCE:

 Anil K. Jain (1989) ‘Fundamentals of Digital Image Processing’,

Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.

 Awcock G.W. & Thomas R. (1996) ‘Applied Image Processing’.

 Sid Ahmed (1995) ‘Image Processing’.

 William K. Pratt (1978) ‘Digital Image Processing’.

 Christopher Watkins, Alberto Sadun, Stephen Marenka ‘Mordern

Image Processing’.

 Maher A. Sid-Ahmed ‘Image Processing’.

 G.W.Awcock, R. Thomas ‘Applied Image Processing’.