Enhancement via fusion of mammographic features

Mammographic image enhancement methods are typically aimed at either improvement of the overall visibility of features or enhancement of a specific sign of malignancy. Here, the authors present a synthesis of the two paradigms by means of image fusion. After a redundant B-spline wavelet transform decomposition is carried out, the transform coefficients are processed for enhancement of microcalcifications, circumscribed masses, and stellate lesions. The modified coefficients are then fused for reconstruction of an enhanced image with improved visualization of malignancies. Both processing for enhancement of selected features and fusion of the resultant images are accomplished within a single wavelet transform frameword which contributes to the computational efficiency of the described method. The devised algorithm not only allows for efficient combination of specific features of importance in the contrast enhanced images, but also provides a flexible frameword for incorporation of different enhancement methods and their independent optimization