Method and apparatus for processing digital mammographic images with parallel multi-scale decomposition and recombining in an optimized multi-scale reconstruction

A method for processing digital mammographic images comprising:

• obtaining, on an a processor-based system, a first mammographic image of an object, the first mammographic image including raw image data with pixel values assigned to each pixel, the first mammographic image also including a boundary region;
• balancing a brightness decline in the boundary region of the first mammographic image to produce a brightness-optimized mammographic image;
• and
• generating, on the processor-based system, a second mammographic image from the brightness-optimized mammographic image by optimizing the sharpness in the imaged object, wherein the sharpness in the imaged object is optimized in order to show fine details of the internal structures of the image object by, in parallel, dividing the brightness-optimized mammographic image through multi-scale decomposition into different non-overlapping portions, which are subsequently independently modified and recombined in a multi-scale reconstruction in order to output an optimized reconstructed mammographic image.

An apparatus configured for processing digital mammograms comprising:

• means for obtaining a first mammogram of an object, the first mammogram including a boundary region;
• means for reconciling a brightness decline in the boundary region of the first mammogram;
• and
• means for generating a brightness-optimized mammogram from different portions of a multi-scale decomposition of the first mammogram by independently modifying decomposed portions of the first mammogram in parallel and then recombining the portions in a multi-scale reconstruction in order to output an optimized reconstructed mammographic image.