Structure-preserving multiscale vessel enhancing diffusion filter

Enhancement of vessels in medical images is still an unsolved problem. Multiscale approaches were proposed to improve the vessel enhancement effect based on the structure size and image resolution. Vessel enhancing diffusion (VED) filter is one of the multiscale approaches, which was based on the scale space theory. VED performs well on enhancing vessel structures but cannot preserve complex structures such as the vessel junctions. In this paper, a structure-preserving diffusion tensor is defined in the diffusion equation, which brings a structure-preserving vessel enhancing diffusion filter. Through the multiscale framework, the proposed method enhances the vessel structures especially the complex structure such as junctions. Experimental evaluation performed on various vessel data sets demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method.