TOMOGRAPHIC IMAGE PROCESSOR

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a tomographic image processor which enables the faithful separation of cortical bones and bone beams according to the intrinsic shapes thereof by utilizing an image expansion and contraction processing. SOLUTION: A hard part/background identifying part 10 generates a binary-coded image for separately identifying the group of the hard part pixels, corresponding to the bone beams in the cortical bones and spongy bones, from the group of the background pixels other than it. A margin frame generation part 16 and a smearing processing part 18 separately identify the group of the internal background pixels corresponding to the spongy bone portion other than the bone beams from the other group of the external background pixels in the group of the background pixels. An internal background expansion part 22 executes the image expansion processing for the internal background pixels to delete the hard part pixels corresponding to the bone beams, and an internal background contraction part 24 executes the image contraction processing for the internal background pixels to restore the hard part pixels corresponding to the cortical bones. COPYRIGHT: (C)2004,JPO