Region Based Adaptive Contrast Enhancement of Medical X-Ray Images

Medical Imaging is one of the most important application areas of digital image processing. Processing of various medical images is very much helpful to visualize and extract more details from the image. Many techniques are available for enhancing the quality of medical image. For enhancement of medical images, Contrast Enhancement is one of the most acceptable methods. Different contrast enhancement techniques i.e. Linear Stretch, Histogram Equalization, Convolution mask enhancement, Region based enhancement, Adaptive enhancement are already available. Choice of Method depends on characteristics of image. This paper deals with contrast enhancement of X-Ray images and presents here a new approach for contrast enhancement based upon Adaptive Neighborhood technique. A hybrid methodology for enhancement has been presented. Comparative analysis of proposed technique against the existing major contrast enhancement techniques has been performed and results of proposed technique are promising.