Improvement of Chest Region CT Images through Automated Gray-Level Remapping

A software system, CTIP, written in Fortran is discussed which remaps the computerized tomography (CT) image gray level so that both the lung and heart regions are clearly visible with a "natural anatomical appearance." The system is adaptive to image statistics derived from the gray-level histogram of the entire image. Unprocessed, conventional remap, and processed images were compared by 22 radiologists, with 82 percent preferring the processed images. All of the respondents agreed that the processed images possessed a "more anatomical" appearance than the conventional remapping approach.