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AssigneeOlympus Corporation
InventorsMakoto Kitamura, Yamato Kanda
Estimating the term…
An image processing apparatus includes: a detecting unit configured to detect images of interest including regions of interest that are estimated as an object to be detected, from a group of a series of images acquired by sequentially imaging a lumen of a living body; a global similarity calculating unit configured to calculate a global similarity that is a similarity between regions including at least regions other than the regions of interest, between the images of interest different from one another; an image-of-interest group extracting unit configured to extract an image-of-interest group including identical regions of interest, in accordance with comparison between a threshold and the global similarity or a determination parameter based on the global similarity; and a representative image extracting unit configured to extract a representative image from the image-of-interest group.
An image processing apparatus comprising:
An image processing method for causing a calculation unit of a computer to perform image processing based on image data of a group of a series of images which are acquired by sequentially imaging a lumen of a living body and recorded in a recording unit, the method comprising:
A non-transitory computer-readable recording medium with an executable program stored thereon, the program causing a computer to execute:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.
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Inspection of images, e.g. flaw detection: biomedical image inspection
Of image signals during a use of endoscope: extracting biological structures
Display arrangement: combining images e.g. side-by-side, superimposed or tiled
Combined with photographic or television appliances: capsule endoscopes for imaging
About 8 years 5 months of term left · ends 11 Apr 2035 (estimated)
1. Technical Field
The disclosure relates to an image processing apparatus, an image processing method, and a computer-readable recording medium, for extracting a representative image from an image group acquired by imaging a lumen of a living body.
2. Related Art
FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating a configuration of an image processing apparatus according to a first embodiment of the present invention;
FIG. 2 is a flowchart illustrating operation of the image processing apparatus illustrated in FIG. 1;
FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram illustrating a series of intraluminal images acquired in chronological order;
Hereinafter, an image processing apparatus, an image processing method, and an image processing program according to embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. The present invention is not limited to these embodiments. The same reference signs are used to designate the same elements throughout the drawings.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an image processing apparatus according to a first embodiment of the present invention. An image processing apparatus 1 according to the first embodiment is an apparatus for extracting an image (image of interest) group including regions of interest that are estimated to be an object to be detected, from a group of a series of images acquired by sequentially imaging a lumen of a living body as a subject by a medical observation apparatus such as a capsule endoscope, and further extracting a representative image from the extracted image-of-interest group. An image showing the lumen of the living body (also referred to as intraluminal image) is normally a color image having a pixel level (pixel value) corresponding to wavelength components of R (red), G (green), and B (blue) at each pixel position. In the following description, abnormal regions such as bleeding, redness, aphtha, and ulcer are detected as the region of interest, and a representative image is extracted from an image-of-interest (abnormal image) group having images including the abnormal regions, but the region of interest is not limited to the above-exemplified abnormal regions.
As illustrated in FIG. 1, the image processing apparatus 1 includes a control unit 10 for controlling the operation of the image processing apparatus 1 as a whole, an image acquiring unit 20 for acquiring image data corresponding to an intraluminal image captured by the medical observation apparatus such as a capsule endoscope, an input unit 30 for inputting a signal to the control unit 10, according to operation from outside, a display unit 40 for displaying various information or images, a recording unit 50 for storing the image data acquired by the image acquiring unit 20 or various programs, and a calculation unit 100 for performing predetermined image processing on the image data.