Medical image enhancement algorithm based on wavelet transform

Low contrast and poor quality are main problems in the production of medical images. By using the wavelet transform and Haar transform, a novel image enhancement approach is proposed. First, a medical image was decomposed with wavelet transform. Secondly, all high-frequency sub-images were decomposed with Haar transform. Thirdly, noise in the frequency field was reduced by the soft-threshold method. Fourthly, high-frequency coefficients were enhanced by different weight values in different sub-images. Then, the enhanced image was obtained through the inverse wavelet transform and inverse Haar transform. Lastly, the image´s histogram was stretched by nonlinear histogram equalisation. Experiments showed that this method can not only enhance an image´s details but can also preserve its edge features effectively.