JP2021169051A - Image clipping device and method - Google Patents

Abstract

To provide an image clipping device capable of clipping only a region of a necessary image of images displayed on a monitor.SOLUTION: Input images including a plurality of images having a region with a black background displayed in a display panel are binarized. A rhombic pixel group consisting of a plurality of pixels having an attention pixel in a center is read out from the binarized image, whether the pixel group matches four patterns for detecting corner parts in a rectangular region according to a way of arrangement of a black level is determined, and a position of the pixel at the corner part is detected. On the basis of the position, the rectangular region of each of the plurality of images is detected. Any one clipping method is selected out of a first clipping method for clipping an image with one image consisting of a rectangular region of an image having the largest size of the plurality of images as a unit, and a second clipping method for clipping an image with a compound image including two or more of the plurality of images as a unit, and an image is clipped from the input image.SELECTED DRAWING: Figure 1

Description

The present invention relates to an image cropping device and a method for cropping a specific image region from an image displayed on a monitor.

A doctor may diagnose a patient by looking at a photographed image of a human body taken by an imaging device such as a computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The captured images used by doctors for diagnosis are collectively referred to as medical images. The medical image is stored in the PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) server, and the workstation reads the medical image from the PACS server and displays it on the monitor.

Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 2000-342539

Sometimes it is necessary to give the medical image to the patient or other medical institution. Medical images are usually compliant with the DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) standard and are displayed on a monitor by software called a DICOM viewer. Therefore, even if the medical image itself is given to the patient, the patient cannot see the medical image.

The medical image file may contain patient's personal information or medical information in addition to the photographed image, and from the viewpoint of personal information protection, the medical image file itself cannot be passed to a third party. There is. Even if personal information or medical information is not included, workstations installed in medical institutions may not be able to send medical image files to the outside via the Internet from the viewpoint of security protection. In addition, it may not be possible to write a medical image file to an external memory (so-called USB memory) via a USB (Universal Serial Bus) terminal.

Therefore, it is conceivable to pass an image file that captures the image displayed on the monitor to the patient or another medical institution. However, in addition to the medical image, the monitor displays a function selection menu for selecting the directory structure of the PACS server or the function of the DICOM viewer. Therefore, it is not preferable to pass the image file that captures the image displayed on the monitor as it is to the patient or other medical institutions.

An object of the present invention is to provide an image cropping device and a method capable of cropping only a necessary image region of an image displayed on a monitor.

The present invention has a binarization unit that binarizes an input image including a plurality of images having a region with a black background displayed on a display panel into a black level and a white level, and the binarization unit. From the digitized binarized image, a diamond-shaped pixel group consisting of a plurality of pixels having a pixel of interest in the center is read out, and the read diamond-shaped pixel group is the corner in the rectangular region according to the arrangement of the black level. It is determined whether or not it matches the four patterns for detecting each part, and it is based on the corner part detection part that detects the position of the image of the corner part and the position of the pixel of the corner part detected by the corner part detection part. A region detection unit that detects a rectangular region of each of the plurality of images, and a first cropping method that crops one image consisting of a rectangular region of an image having the maximum size among the plurality of images as a unit. , A second cropping method for cropping a composite image including two or more of the plurality of images as a unit, and a cropping area setting unit for cropping an image from the input image by the selected cropping method. Provided is an image cropping device to be provided.

The present invention binarizes an input image including a plurality of images having a region with a black background displayed on a display panel into a black level and a white level, and from the binarized binarized image to the center. Whether a diamond-shaped pixel group consisting of a plurality of pixels having a pixel of interest is read out, and the read-out diamond-shaped pixel group matches four patterns for detecting corners in a rectangular region according to the arrangement of black levels. Whether or not it is determined, the position of the pixel at the corner is detected, the rectangular area of each of the plurality of images is detected based on the detected position of the pixel at the corner, and the above is performed according to the input operation. A first cropping method in which one image consisting of a rectangular area of an image having the maximum size among a plurality of images is cut out as a unit, and a composite image including two or more of the plurality of images is cut out as a unit. selects one of the second cut-out method provides images cut method for cutting out an image from the input image at a selected cut method.

According to the image cropping device and method of the present invention, only the necessary medical image region can be cropped from the image displayed on the monitor.

It is a block diagram which shows the structure of the monitor which includes the image cropping apparatus of one Embodiment. It is a figure which shows an example of the image including the medical image displayed on the display panel of a monitor. It is a figure which shows the unit of the binarized image which the corner part detection part reads out in the image cutout apparatus of one Embodiment. It is a figure which shows the pattern which detects the pixel position of the upper left corner part of a rectangular area. It is a figure which shows the pattern which detects the pixel position of the upper right corner part of a rectangular area. It is a figure which shows the pattern which detects the pixel position of the lower left corner part of a rectangular area. It is a figure which shows the pattern which detects the pixel position of the lower right corner part of a rectangular area. It is a figure which shows an example of the operation which the corner part detection part interpolates the pixel of the pixel position outside the image displayed on the display panel. It is a figure which conceptually shows the state which the corner part detection part detected the pixel of the corner part of the medical image included in the image shown in FIG. It is an example which the corner part detection part could not detect a part corner part, and it is a figure which shows the case which it may be considered that the area detection part in the image cutting apparatus of one Embodiment detected a rectangular area of a medical image. .. It is a figure which shows other example of the image including the medical image displayed on the display panel of a monitor. It is an example of the rectangular area detected by the area detection part, and is the figure which shows the example of the medical image cut out by the cutout area setting part in the image cutting device of one Embodiment. It is a figure which shows another example of the medical image which the cutout area setting part cuts out. It is a figure which shows an example of the menu for selecting a cutting method. It is a figure which shows the example which includes a plurality of medical images of different sizes in the image displayed on a display panel. It is a figure which shows an example of the menu for selecting a cutout method used when the image displayed on a display panel contains a plurality of medical images of different sizes. It is a figure which shows an example of the medical image which the cutout area setting part cuts out when the image displayed on a display panel contains a plurality of medical images of different sizes. FIG. 5 is a partial block diagram showing a monitor configuration suitable for displaying an image in which a monochrome image and a color image are mixed in the display panel. It is a characteristic figure which shows the input / output characteristic of the gamma table of DICOM GSDF and gamma 2.2.

Hereinafter, the image cropping apparatus and method of one embodiment will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. In FIG. 1, a medical image is stored in the server 1, and the workstation 2 reads the medical image from the server 1 and displays it on the monitor 3. The server 1 may be a PACS server, and the medical image may be an image compliant with the DICOM standard. When the medical image is an image conforming to the DICOM standard, the workstation 2 displays the medical image on the monitor 3 by the DICOM viewer.

As described above, the image (input image) displayed on the monitor 3 may include the directory structure of the server 1 or the function selection menu in addition to the medical image.

The monitor 3 includes an on-screen display (OSD) superimposing unit 301, a panel driving unit 302, a display panel 303, and an operation unit 309. These are the configurations that the monitor 3 usually has.

Further, the monitor 3 includes an image memory 304, a binarization unit 305, a corner detection unit 306, an area detection unit 307, a cutout area setting unit 308, an image memory 310, an image writing control unit 311 and a storage medium connection port 312. .. These are the configurations provided in the present embodiment for cutting out a necessary medical image area from the image displayed on the monitor 3 and writing it to the storage medium 4 which is an external memory.

The OSD superimposing unit 301 superimposes OSD information (additional information) such as characters and symbols on the image displayed on the monitor 3 when a predetermined operation is performed by the operation unit 309. The panel drive unit 302 drives the display panel 303 to display an image including a medical image on the display panel 303.

The image memory 304 stores an image including a medical image displayed on the display panel 303. The binarization unit 305 binarizes each pixel value of the image read from the image memory 304. Specifically, the binarization unit 305 sets the pixel value below the predetermined threshold value to 0 and the pixel value exceeding the threshold value to 1. The threshold value may be 0 or may be slightly greater than 0 in consideration of black level offset or noise. The threshold may be adjustable.

FIG. 2 shows an example of an image 50 which is an input image to the monitor 3 and includes a medical image 51 displayed on the display panel 303 and stored in the image memory 304. In the image 50 shown in FIG. 2, in addition to the medical image 51 obtained by photographing a part of the body, the directory structure display area 52 in which the directory structure is displayed and the function selection menu display area 53 in which the function selection menu is displayed are shown. Etc., including images other than the medical image 51.

In the medical image 51, the body is represented in white or gray on a black background. Therefore, when the image 50 shown in FIG. 2 is binarized by the binarization unit 305, the pixel value of the background portion becomes 0 and the pixel value of the body portion becomes 1. The part other than the medical image 51 such as the directory structure display area 52 and the function selection menu display area 53 has a pixel value of 1 except for the characters displayed in black.

Based on the binarized image supplied from the binarized unit 305, the corner detection unit 306 estimates the region with the black background as the medical image 51, and the four corners of the rectangular region of the medical image 51. Detects the pixel position of. The corner detection unit 306 reads out 41 pixels of the pattern shown in FIG. 3 as a unit in the binarized image obtained by binarizing the image 50 as an example. In FIG. 3, black circles are pixels of interest, and white circles are peripheral pixels located around the pixels of interest.

The corner detection unit 306 detects the corners of a rectangular region with a black background by determining whether or not the read 41 pixels match a specific pattern.

FIG. 4A is a pattern TL for detecting the pixel position in the upper left corner of the rectangular region. FIG. 4B is a pattern TR for detecting the pixel position in the upper right corner of the rectangular region. FIG. 4C is a pattern BL for detecting the pixel position in the lower left corner of the rectangular region. FIG. 4D is a pattern BR for detecting the pixel position in the lower right corner of the rectangular region. In FIGS. 4A to 4D, * indicates a pixel that does not perform pattern matching. That is, the pixel at the position indicated by * may be 0 or 1.

When the corner detection unit 306 performs pattern matching using the patterns TL, TR, BL, and BR shown in FIGS. 4A to 4D and the pixel near the corner of the image 50 is the pixel of interest, 41 shown in FIG. Some of the pixels may not be present. In such a case, the corner detection unit 306 interpolates the pixels at the pixel positions outside the image 50, as shown in FIG. As an example, the corner detection unit 306 interpolates the pixels at the pixel positions outside the image 50 with the pixels at the upper, lower, left, and right ends of the image 50.

Taking the upper left corner of the image 50 shown in FIG. 5 as an example, the pixels at the outer pixel positions are interpolated by the pixels P11 to P13 and P21, P31, P41, and P51 located at the uppermost line or the left end. There are various methods for interpolating the pixels at the outer pixel positions, and the method is not limited to the interpolation method shown in FIG.

The corner detection unit 306 searches for pixels that match any of the patterns TL, TR, BL, and BR at a predetermined ratio or more while shifting the pixel of interest from left to right and from top to bottom of the image 50 by one pixel. do. When there are pixels that match at a predetermined ratio or more, the corner detection unit 306 stores the position information of the pixels in a register built in. A predetermined ratio may be adjustable.

By the above processing, as shown in FIG. 6, the corner detection unit 306 has the position of the pixel Pc1 in the upper left corner, the position of the pixel Pc2 in the upper right corner, and the pixel Pc3 in the lower left corner in the medical image 51. The position and the position of the pixel Pc4 in the lower right corner are detected.

The area detection unit 307 detects a rectangular area with a black background such as the medical image 51 based on the pixel positions of the four corners detected by the corner detection unit 306. The area detection unit 307 determines that the rectangular area has been detected when the following conditions are satisfied.

First, the horizontal pixel position detected by using the pattern TL and the horizontal pixel position detected by using the pattern BL match within a predetermined error range. Secondly, the horizontal pixel position detected by using the pattern TR and the horizontal pixel position detected by using the pattern BR match within a predetermined error range. Thirdly, the vertical pixel position detected by using the pattern TL and the vertical pixel position detected by using the pattern TR match within a predetermined error range. Fourth, the vertical pixel position detected by using the pattern BL and the vertical pixel position detected by using the pattern BR match within a predetermined error range.

The horizontal pixel position (x) and the vertical pixel position (y) detected by using the patterns TL, TR, BL, and BR stored in the register of the corner detection unit 306 are (x, y) = (100, respectively. It is assumed that they are 100), (300, 100), (100, 200), and (300, 200). At this time, the area detection unit 307 detects a region in which (x, y) = (100,100) is the upper left corner portion and (x, y) = (300, 200) is the lower right corner portion as a rectangular region.

When one of the four corners cannot be detected by the corner detection unit 306 as shown in FIG. 7 (a), the two diagonal corners are shown in FIG. 7 (b). In some cases, the part cannot be detected. In FIGS. 7A and 7B, the hatched circles indicate the detected corner pixels, and the circles indicated by the alternate long and short dash lines indicate the undetectable corner pixels.

The area detection unit 307 may consider that the rectangular area has been detected in the case of (a) or (b) of FIG. At this time, the area detection unit 307 may substitute the position information of the pixels at the corners that could not be detected with the position information of the pixels at the corners that were detected.

It is assumed that, in the region of the image 50 other than the medical image 51, there is a rectangular region of a non-medical image represented in black or a gray close to black even though it is not a medical image. At this time, the corner detection unit 306 may detect the corner of the rectangular region of the non-medical image, and the region detection unit 307 may erroneously detect the rectangular region of the non-medical image as the rectangular region of the medical image.

Generally, a rectangular area of a medical image has an aspect ratio in a predetermined range, and an excessively horizontally long or vertically long rectangular area is likely not a rectangular area of a medical image. Therefore, it is preferable that the region detection unit 307 excludes a rectangular region having an aspect ratio outside the predetermined range by regarding it as not being a rectangular region of the medical image.

As described above, when the image 50 shown in FIG. 2 is input to the monitor 3, the area detection unit 307 detects the medical image 51 in the image 50 as a rectangular area from which the image should be cut out. When the operation unit 309 gives an instruction to cut out the medical image 51, the cutout area setting unit 308 cuts out the area of the medical image 51 out of the images 50 stored in the image memory 304, and cuts out the cut out image into the image memory 310. Supply to. The image memory 310 stores the clipped image.

When the operation unit 309 gives an instruction to write the cut-out image to the storage medium 4, the image writing control unit 311 reads the cut-out image from the image memory 310 and stores the cut-out image via the storage medium connection port 312. Write to medium 4. As a result, the storage medium 4 stores an image obtained by cutting out only the region of the medical image 51 shown in FIG.

The storage medium 4 is, for example, a USB memory, and in this case, the storage medium connection port 312 is a USB connection port. The storage medium 4 may be a memory card, in which case the storage medium connection port 312 is a memory card connection port.

FIG. 8 shows another example of the input image to the monitor 3. The image 50 shown in FIG. 8 includes four medical images 501 to 504 and a function selection menu display area 53. Similar to the case where the image 50 shown in FIG. 2 is input to the monitor 3, the display panel 303 displays the image 50 shown in FIG. 8, and the image memory 304 stores the image 50 shown in FIG.

The binarization unit 305 binarizes the image 50 shown in FIG. 8, and the corner detection unit 306 uses patterns TL, TR, BL, and BR to identify the corners of the rectangular region with a black background included in the image 50. Detect the pixel position.

Image 50 shown in FIG. 8 includes four medical images 501-504. Therefore, the corner detection unit 306 detects the positions of the four corner pixels Pc11 to Pc14 in the medical image 501, and detects the positions of the four corner pixels Pc21 to Pc24 in the medical image 502. The corner detection unit 306 detects the positions of the four corner pixels Pc31 to Pc34 in the medical image 503, and detects the positions of the four corner pixels Pc41 to Pc44 in the medical image 504.

In this way, when the corner portion detection unit 306 detects the pixel positions of the corner portions of the plurality of rectangular regions, the region detection unit 307 determines whether or not the above-mentioned conditions are satisfied in each rectangular region. Detects a rectangular area. Further, the area detection unit 307 detects a composite area (composite image) in which two or more of the plurality of rectangular areas are combined as a rectangular area.

When four medical images 501 to 504 are present as shown in FIG. 8, the region detection unit 307 detects a rectangular region as shown in FIGS. 9A to 9F.

Specifically, as shown in FIG. 9A, the area detection unit 307 individually detects the medical images 501 to 504 as a rectangular area.

As shown in FIG. 9B, the region detection unit 307 detects the composite image 5013 including the medical images 501 and 503 surrounded by the pixels Pc11, Pc12, Pc33, and Pc34 as a rectangular region. As shown in FIG. 9C, the area detection unit 307 detects the composite image 5024 including the medical images 502 and 504 surrounded by the pixels Pc21, Pc22, Pc43, and Pc44 as a rectangular area.

As shown in FIG. 9D, the region detection unit 307 detects the composite image 5012 including the medical images 501 and 502 surrounded by the pixels Pc11, Pc22, Pc13, and Pc24 as a rectangular region. As shown in FIG. 9 (e), the region detection unit 307 detects the composite image 5034 including the medical images 503 and 504 surrounded by the pixels Pc31, Pc42, Pc33, and Pc44 as a rectangular region.

Further, as shown in FIG. 9 (f), the region detection unit 307 detects the composite image 500 including the entire medical images 501 to 504 surrounded by the pixels Pc11, Pc22, Pc33, and Pc44 as a rectangular region.

By operating the operation unit 309, the operator of the monitor 3 selects a rectangular area to be cut out from the image 50 by the cutout area setting unit 308 from the (a) to (f) of FIG. As shown by an arrow in FIG. 9, the cutout area setting unit 308 switches the rectangular areas (a) to (f) of FIG. 9 in order each time the operator presses one operation button on the operation unit 309.

In this way, the operator can easily select any of the rectangular regions (a) to (f) of FIG. 9 simply by pressing the operation button normally provided on the operation unit 309. When the monitor 3 is set to the mode in which the area of the medical image is cut out from the image 50 and written to the storage medium 4, the operation button may be assigned a function of switching the rectangular area.

When (a) of FIG. 9 is selected, the cutout area setting unit 308 additionally cuts out each area of the medical images 501 to 504 among the images 50 stored in the image memory 304 into the image memory 310. Supply. The image memory 310 stores four images.

When the operation unit 309 gives an instruction to write the cut-out image to the storage medium 4, the image writing control unit 311 reads out the four cut-out images from the image memory 310 and stores them via the storage medium connection port 312. Write to medium 4. As a result, the storage medium 4 stores images obtained by individually cutting out each region of the medical images 501 to 504 shown in FIG.

When (b) of FIG. 9 is selected, one composite image 5013 including medical images 501 and 503 is stored in the storage medium 4, and when (c) of FIG. 9 is selected, the storage medium 4 stores one composite image 5013. Stores one composite image 5024 that includes medical images 502 and 504.

When (d) of FIG. 9 is selected, one composite image 5012 including medical images 501 and 502 is stored in the storage medium 4, and when (e) of FIG. 9 is selected, the storage medium 4 stores one composite image 5012. Stores one composite image 5034 that includes medical images 503 and 504.

When (f) of FIG. 9 is selected, the storage medium 4 stores one composite image 500 including the entire medical images 501 to 504.

Further, as shown in FIG. 10, the cutout area setting unit 308 selectively cuts out only one of the medical images 501 to 504 in the image memory 310 in response to the operation of the operation unit 309. It may be supplied. In this way, the storage medium 4 can store only one selected medical image from the medical images 501 to 504.

When the medical image to be cut out is selected as shown in FIG. 9 or 10, it is preferable that the OSD superimposing unit 301 superimposes a frame of a predetermined color around the selected medical image.

As described above, the cutout area setting unit 308 can select the first cutout method for individually cutting out the rectangular area of at least one of the medical images 501 to 504 as a unit. The cutout area setting unit 308 can select a second cutout method for cutting out a composite image including two or more of medical images 501 to 504 as a unit. The cutout area setting unit 308 selects one of the cutout methods according to the input operation, and cuts out the medical image from the image 50 by the selected cutout method.

The cutout area setting unit 308 can also select any one of the cutout methods from a larger number of cutout methods and cut out the medical image from the image 50 by the selected cutout method.

The operator can cut out only the necessary medical image area of the image 50 displayed on the monitor 3 by a simple operation and store it in the storage medium 4.

Instead of switching the medical images to be cut out in order among the images 50, the cutting method may be selected. As shown in FIG. 11, the OSD superimposing unit 301 causes the display panel 303 to display a menu for selecting a cutting method when a predetermined operation is performed by the operation unit 309. The OSD superimposition unit 301 may display the menu on the display panel 303 instead of the image 50, or may superimpose the menu on the image 50. The OSD superimposition unit 301 functions as a menu display unit.

In the example shown in FIG. 11, the display panel 303 has a first option of "cutting out and saving each medical image individually", a second option of "cutting out and saving the entire medical image", and "manually". Three options of the third option "Select and save the medical image" are displayed as a menu. The third option may be omitted and only the first and second options may be used.

As shown in FIG. 9A, the first option is an option to store four images obtained by individually cutting out each region of the medical images 501 to 504 in the storage medium 4. The second option is, as shown in FIG. 9 (f), an option to cut out one composite image 500 including the entire medical images 501 to 504 and store it in the storage medium 4. The third option is the option of directly selecting the medical image to be stored in the storage medium 4 as shown in FIG. 9 or FIG.

When the third option is selected, the medical images excluding the medical image selected in the first option or the second option may be switched in order.

FIG. 12 conceptually shows a case where the medical images 511 to 513 exist in the image 50 and the size of the medical image 513 is the largest. In this case, as shown in FIG. 13, in addition to the first to third options shown in FIG. 11, a fourth option of "cutting out and storing the maximum size medical image" can be added.

As shown in FIG. 14A, the first option is an option to store in the storage medium 4 three images obtained by individually cutting out each region of the medical images 511 to 513. The fourth option is to cut out the maximum size medical image 513 and store it in the storage medium 4, as shown in FIG. 14 (b). The second option is an option to cut out one composite image 510 including the entire medical images 511 to 513 and store it in the storage medium 4.

By the way, the medical image displayed on the monitor 3 may be a monochrome image or a color image. When a plurality of medical images are displayed on the monitor 3 as shown in FIG. 8, some medical images may be monochrome images and some other medical images may be color images. It is necessary for the monitor 3 to perform appropriate image processing on each of the monochrome image and the color image and display them on the display panel 303.

FIG. 15 shows a configuration of a monitor 3 suitable for displaying an image in which a monochrome image and a color image are mixed. In FIG. 15, the illustration of the common portion with that of FIG. 1 is omitted, and a partial configuration centered on a different portion is shown.

In FIG. 15, the color / monochrome determination unit 321 determines whether the image is a color image or a monochrome image for each rectangular region of the medical image detected by the region detection unit 307 in the input image 50. The gamma table generation unit 322 generates a gamma table called DICOM GSDF in the rectangular region of the color image, and generates a gamma table of gamma 2.2 in the rectangular region of the monochrome image.

Assuming that the image data is 8 bits, the DICOM GSDF and the gamma table of gamma 2.2 have input / output characteristics as shown in FIG. The gamma table generation unit 322 can generate a gamma table of DICOM GSDF and gamma 2.2 by calculation using a calculation formula.

Instead of generating the gamma table by calculation, a lookup table indicating the gamma table may be stored in the storage unit, and the output value of the image data may be determined by referring to the lookup table. In this case, the gamma table generation unit 322 is a gamma table holding unit.

The gamma correction unit 323 gamma-corrects the image 50 input according to the gamma table generated by the gamma table generation unit 322 and supplies it to the OSD superimposition unit 301. Since the gamma table is selected for each rectangular region of the medical image, the gamma correction unit 323 can appropriately gamma-correct the rectangular region of the color image and the rectangular region of the monochrome image.

The color / monochrome determination unit 321 has a difference between the R signal and the G signal of the RGB signals constituting the image data, the difference between the R signal and the B signal, and the difference between the G signal and the B signal when they are equal to or less than a predetermined threshold value. When it is small, it is determined that the image is a monochrome image. When any of the difference between the R signal and the G signal, the difference between the R signal and the B signal, and the difference between the G signal and the B signal exceeds the threshold value, the color / monochrome determination unit 321 has a large difference. Judged as a color image. The difference threshold may be adjustable.

The medical image may be a light blue or light green image rather than a full gray image. Therefore, the color / monochrome determination unit 321 has the same ratio of the R signal, the G signal, and the B signal in all the pixels in the rectangular region of the medical image detected by the region detection unit 307, or the ratio is equal to or less than a predetermined threshold value. When it is a predetermined single color image having a small difference between the two, it may be determined that the image is a monochrome image. The ratio threshold may be adjustable.

Similarly, the color / monochrome determination unit 321 determines whether the image is a color image or a monochrome image in the directory structure display area 52 and the function selection menu display area 53. Similarly, in the directory structure display area 52 and the function selection menu display area 53, the gamma correction unit 323 gamma corrects the image according to the gamma table generated by the gamma table generation unit 322.

According to the image cropping apparatus and method of the present embodiment described above, only the necessary medical image region can be cropped from the image displayed on the monitor. Moreover, according to the image cutting device and method of the present embodiment, it is possible to cut out only the necessary medical image area by a simple operation without the need for the operator to perform complicated operations.

By providing the image cropping device of the present embodiment on the monitor 3, even if the medical image file cannot be transmitted from the workstation 2 to the outside via the medical image file, or the medical image file cannot be written to the external memory. Medical images can be written to an external memory and taken out.

According to the image cutting device and method of the present embodiment, it is possible to cut out only a necessary medical image area, not an image obtained by capturing the image displayed on the monitor 3 as it is. Therefore, according to the image cropping device and method of the present embodiment, it is possible to exclude unnecessary areas such as the directory structure of the PACS server or the function selection menu.

The present invention is not limited to the present embodiment described above, and various modifications can be made without departing from the gist of the present invention. The internal configuration of the monitor 3 in FIG. 1 may be configured by hardware or software. The proper use of hardware and software is arbitrary, and both may be mixed.

A part of the internal configuration of the monitor 3 may be configured by a microcomputer or a microprocessor of a microcomputer. The binarization unit 305-cutout area setting unit 308 and the image writing control unit 311 may be configured by a microprocessor. The image memories 304 and 310 may be configured by the memory provided in the microcomputer.

3 Monitor 4 Storage medium 301 OSD superimposition unit 302 Panel drive unit 303 Display panel 304,310 Image memory 305 Binarization unit 306 Square detection unit 307 Area detection unit 308 Cutout area setting unit 309 Operation unit 311 Image writing control unit 312 Storage Media connection port

Claims (4)

A binarization unit that binarizes an input image that is displayed on the display panel and includes a plurality of images having a black background area into a black level and a white level.
From the binarized image binarized by the binarization unit, a diamond-shaped pixel group consisting of a plurality of pixels having a pixel of interest in the center is read out, and the read out diamond-shaped pixel group is arranged at a black level. A corner detection unit that determines whether or not it matches the four patterns that detect each corner in the rectangular region according to the above, and detects the position of the pixel of the corner.
A region detection unit that detects a rectangular region of each of the plurality of images based on the positions of the pixels of the corner portion detected by the corner detection unit.
A first cropping method for cropping one image consisting of a rectangular region of an image having the maximum size among the plurality of images as a unit, and a composite image including two or more of the plurality of images as a unit. A cutout area setting unit for cutting out an image from the input image by the selected cutout method by selecting a second cutout method for cutting out,
An image cropping device comprising. The corner detection unit determines whether or not the pixel of interest matches any of the four patterns at a predetermined ratio or more while shifting the pixel of interest by one pixel in the binarized image, and searches for the pixel at the corner. do,
The image cropping device according to claim 1. When a part of the pixels of the diamond-shaped pixel group read out does not exist, the corner detection unit interpolates the region where a part of the pixels does not exist with the pixels at the upper, lower, left and right ends in the binarized image. Detect the corners,
The image cropping device according to claim 2. The input image, which is displayed on the display panel and contains multiple images with a black background area, is binarized to black level and white level.
From the binarized binarized image, a diamond-shaped pixel group consisting of a plurality of pixels having a pixel of interest in the center is read out, and the read-out diamond-shaped pixel group is in a rectangular region according to the arrangement of the black level. It is determined whether or not it matches the four patterns for detecting each corner, and the positions of the pixels at the corners are detected.
Based on the detected pixel positions at the corners, a rectangular area of each of the plurality of images is detected.
A first cropping method for cropping one image consisting of a rectangular region of an image having the maximum size among the plurality of images according to an input operation, and two of the plurality of images. Select one of the second cropping methods for cropping the composite image including the above as a unit, and select one of them.
An image cropping method for cropping an image from the input image by the selected cropping method.

Images