A New Method Used to Enhance the SPAIR Image of the Spine MRI

Abstract

Background: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a handy diagnostic tool for orthopedic disorders, particularly spinal and joint diseases.

Methods: The lumbar intervertebral disc is visible in the T1 and T2 weight sequences of the spine MRI, which aids in diagnosing lumbar disc herniation, lumbar spine tuberculosis, lumbar spine tumors, and other conditions. The lumbar intervertebral disc cannot be seen accurately in the Spectral Attenuated Inversion Recovery (SPAIR) due to weaknesses in the fat and frequency offset parameters, which is not conducive to developing the intelligence diagnosis model of medical image.

Results: In order to solve this problem, we propose a composite framework, which is first to use the contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE) method to enhance the SPAIR image contrast of the spine MRI and then use the non-local means method to remove the noise of the image to ensure that the image contrast is uniform without losing details. We employ the Information Entropy (IE), Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), and feature similarity index measure (FSIM) to quantify image quality after enhancement by the composite framework.

Conclusion: The outcomes of the experiments' output images and quantitative data indicate that our composite framework is better than others.

Keywords: Diagnostic tool; MRI; Orthopedic disorder.; SPAIR image; The contrast limited adaptive histogram equalization; The non-local means method.