A new unsharp masking algorithm for mammography using non-linear enhancement function

Abstract

Mammography is especially valuable as an early detection tool because it can identify breast cancer at a stage when treatment may be more effective. This paper introduces a new Unsharp Masking (UM) algorithm using a non-linear enhancement function. The proposed algorithm combines the conventional UM with the non-linear enhancement function. The conventional UM algorithm is extremely sensitive to noise because of the presence of the linear high pass filter. The improved high pass filter used in the proposed work provides high frequency components of the image which are insensitive to noise which reduces the noise sensitivity of the UM algorithm. The input image is simultaneously processed using the improved high pass filter and the non-linear enhancement function; both the images are then combined to get the final enhanced image. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm not only enhances the edges of the masses, but at the same time suppresses the background noise as well. © 2012 Springer-Verlag GmbH Berlin Heidelberg.