Image fusion-based low-dose CBCT enhancement method for visualizing miniscrew insertion in the infrazygomatic crest

Area of Science:

• Digital dentistry
• Medical imaging
• Image processing

Background:

• Low-dose cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) in dentistry often suffers from poor image quality, including underexposure, overexposure, low visibility, and low contrast.
• These image quality issues can hinder accurate diagnosis and surgical planning, particularly for procedures like subzygomatic small screw insertion.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a low-dose CBCT image enhancement method for dental applications.
• To improve the interpretability of oral CBCT images, specifically addressing issues of over/underexposure, low visibility, and low contrast.
• To facilitate precise subzygomatic small screw implantation through enhanced CBCT imaging.

Main Methods:

• A novel image fusion technique is proposed, integrating a sharpening correction module to compensate for detail loss in underexposed/overexposed regions.
• A visibility restoration module utilizing type II fuzzy sets and a contrast enhancement module employing curve transformation are designed.
• A perceptual fusion module combines the enhanced visibility and contrast information for comprehensive image improvement.

Main Results:

• The proposed method effectively addresses overexposure, underexposure, low visibility, and low contrast in oral CBCT images.
• Comparative and ablation experiments demonstrate superior performance compared to existing advanced enhancement algorithms.
• The enhancement algorithm achieved evaluation metric improvements of 0.07-2 on both datasets compared to the best-performing method.

Conclusions:

• The developed low-dose CBCT image enhancement method significantly improves image quality and interpretability for dental applications.
• The technique shows promise for enhancing the visualization required for subzygomatic small screw implantation.
• The proposed algorithm offers a robust solution for improving low-dose CBCT imaging in dentistry.