A Noise-robust and Overshoot-free Alternative to Unsharp Masking for Enhancing the Acuity of MR Images

Poor acutance of images (unsharpness) is one of the major concerns in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MRI-based diagnosis and clinical interventions become difficult due to the vague textural information and weak morphological margins on images. A novel image sharpening algorithm named as maximum local variation-based unsharp masking (MLVUM) to address the issue of 'unsharpness' in MRI is proposed in this paper. In the MLVUM, the sharpened image is the algebraic sum of the input image and the product of the user-defined scale and the difference between the output of a newly designed nonlinear spatial filter named maximum local variation-controlled edge smoothing Gaussian filter (MLVESGF) and the input image, weighted by the normalised MLV. The MLVESGF is a locally adaptive 2D Gaussian edge smoothing kernel whose standard deviation is directly proportional to the local value of the normalized MLV. The values of the acutance-to-noise ratio (ANR) and absolute mean brightness error (AMBE) shown by the MLVUM on 100 MRI slices are 0.6463 ± 0.1852 and 0.3323 ± 0.2200, respectively. Compared to 17 state-of-the-art image sharpening algorithms, the MLVUM exhibited a higher ANR and lower AMBE. The MLVUM selectively enhances the sharpness of edges in the MR images without amplifying the background noise without altering the mean brightness level.