<title>Medical imaging</title>

Abstract

The major trends and developments in medical image processing are highlighted which are taking advantage of recent advances in computer science and technology. Through the wide-spread use of visual information processing within numerous fields of medicine a dramatical change of the health supply has taken place. The impact of the information processing technology on the treatment of patients are summarised.. Image analysis includes processes that produce information about the image. Although image enhancement is frequently employed for visual improvement of the image, it its virtually always used prior to image analysis.Pictorial data supplies an abundance of information by the help of which medical diagnoses are frequently concluded. Unfortunately images obtained routinely under clinical conditions often suffer from rather poor quality. Major reasons for the sub-optimal quality are the difficulties in obtaining such images (illumination, organ movements, respiration, varying perspectives, etc.), technology-dependent insufficiencies of the imaging process (e.g. ultrasound) and the dilemma that parameters of the image quality depend on the final diagnosis which is drawn according to the image content. Digital techniques potentially cope with these deficiencies and allow for an interactive and locally varying processing for various purposes. Furthermore, even (textural) 98 SP1E Vol. 3346 . 0277-786X/981$1O.OO Downloaded From: http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 06/23/2016 Terms of Use: http://spiedigitallibrary.org/ss/TermsOfUse.aspx