Morphological Operation-Based Unsharp Masking Filter

Abstract

Novel coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2 has resulted in the outburst of the respiratory illness called COVID-19. In this infection, virus enters the cells and makes multiple copies of themselves. Screening of COVID-19 can be done efficiently using CT-scan images. Due to the presence of several anomalous details and undesirable distortions, COVID-19-infected areas overlap. Hence, enhancement becomes a necessity. This paper illustrates an improved unsharp masking (UM) filter with morphological filter (MF) for COVID-19 CT-scan images. Here, two flat disk-shaped structuring element are used with top-hat and bottom-hat operations. This technique improves the contrast and edge sharpening of the images. The quality of the obtained enhanced image is evaluated by average gradient (AG) showing efficient result of the proposed filter with significant enhancement and edge sharpening.