JP7248062B2 - Image clipping device and method - Google Patents

Description

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

2. Description of the Related Art A doctor sometimes diagnoses a patient by looking at a photographed image of a human body taken by an imaging device such as a computed tomography device (CT) or a magnetic resonance imaging device (MRI). Captured images used by doctors for diagnosis are collectively called medical images. Medical images are stored in a PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) server, and the workstation reads out the medical images from the PACS server and displays them on a monitor.

JP-A-2000-342539

There are times when medical images need to be delivered to a patient or other medical facility. Medical images usually conform to 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 handed over to the patient, the patient cannot view the medical image.

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

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

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is an object of the present invention to provide an image cropping device and method capable of cropping only a necessary image area from an image displayed on a monitor.

The present invention provides a binarization unit that binarizes an input image displayed on a display panel and including a plurality of medical images having black background areas into a black level and a white level, and the binarization unit: From the binarized binarized image, a rhombus-shaped pixel group consisting of a plurality of pixels having a target pixel in the center is read out, and the read out rhombus-shaped pixel group is arranged in a rectangular area according to the arrangement of the black levels. a corner detection unit that determines whether or not the corners match the four patterns for detecting the corners respectively, and detects the positions of the pixels of the corners; a region detection unit for detecting a rectangular region of each of the plurality of medical images, and one medical image comprising a rectangular region of the medical image having the largest size among the plurality of medical images. and a second extraction method for extracting a composite image including two or more of the plurality of medical images as a unit, and the input image is extracted by the selected extraction method. and a clipping region setting unit for clipping a medical image from the image clipping device.

The present invention binarizes an input image, which includes a plurality of medical images having black background regions, to be displayed on a display panel into black and white levels, and converts the binarized binarized image into a center A diamond-shaped pixel group consisting of a plurality of pixels having a target pixel is read out, and the read-out diamond-shaped pixel group matches four patterns for detecting corners in a rectangular area according to the arrangement of black levels. and detecting the position of the pixel at the corner, detecting the rectangular region of each of the plurality of medical images based on the detected position of the pixel at the corner, and performing the operation according to the input operation , a rectangular region of a medical image having the largest size among the plurality of medical images
selecting one of a first extraction method for extracting one medical image as a unit and a second extraction method for extracting a composite image including two or more of the plurality of medical images as a unit; An image clipping method for clipping a medical image from the input image is provided.

According to the image cropping device and method of the present invention, it is possible to crop only the necessary medical image region from the image displayed on the monitor.

1 is a block diagram showing the configuration of a monitor provided with an image clipping device of one embodiment; FIG. FIG. 4 is a diagram showing an example of an image including a medical image displayed on the display panel of the monitor; FIG. 4 is a diagram showing units of a binarized image read by a corner detection unit in the image cropping device of one embodiment; FIG. 10 is a diagram showing a pattern for detecting the pixel position of the upper left corner of a rectangular area; FIG. 10 is a diagram showing a pattern for detecting a pixel position in the upper right corner of a rectangular area; FIG. 10 is a diagram showing a pattern for detecting the pixel position of the lower left corner of a rectangular area; FIG. 10 is a diagram showing a pattern for detecting a pixel position in the lower right corner of a rectangular area; FIG. 10 is a diagram showing an example of the operation of the corner detection unit interpolating pixels at pixel positions outside the image displayed on the display panel; FIG. 3 is a diagram conceptually showing a state in which a corner detection unit detects corner pixels of a medical image included in the image shown in FIG. 2 ; FIG. 10 is a diagram showing an example in which the corner detection unit fails to detect a part of the corners, and a case where it can be considered that the region detection unit in the image cropping device according to one embodiment has detected a rectangular region of the medical image; . FIG. 4 is a diagram showing another example of an image including a medical image displayed on the display panel of the monitor; FIG. 3 is an example of a rectangular area detected by an area detection unit, and is a diagram showing an example of a medical image to be clipped by a clipping region setting unit in the image clipping device of one embodiment. FIG. 10 is a diagram showing another example of a medical image cut out by the cut-out region setting unit; FIG. 10 is a diagram showing an example of a menu for selecting an extraction method; FIG. FIG. 4 is a diagram showing an example in which an image displayed on a display panel includes a plurality of medical images of different sizes; FIG. 10 is a diagram showing an example of a menu for selecting an extraction method used when an image displayed on a display panel includes multiple medical images of different sizes; FIG. 10 is a diagram showing an example of a medical image to be clipped by a clipping region setting unit when an image displayed on the display panel includes a plurality of medical images of different sizes; FIG. 4 is a partial block diagram showing the configuration of a monitor suitable for displaying an image in which a monochrome image and a color image are mixed on the display panel; FIG. 4 is a characteristic diagram showing input/output characteristics of gamma tables of DICOM GSDF and gamma 2.2;

An image cropping device and method according to one embodiment will be described below with reference to the accompanying drawings. In FIG. 1, a server 1 stores medical images, and a workstation 2 reads the medical images from the server 1 and displays them on a monitor 3 . The server 1 may be a PACS server, and the medical images may be images conforming to the DICOM standard. When the medical image conforms to the DICOM standard, the workstation 2 displays the medical image on the monitor 3 using the DICOM viewer.

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

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

The monitor 3 also includes an image memory 304 , a binarization unit 305 , a corner detection unit 306 , an area detection unit 307 , a clipping 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 this embodiment for extracting a necessary medical image region 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 operating unit 309 . The panel driving unit 302 drives the display panel 303 to display images including medical images on the display panel 303 .

The image memory 304 stores images including medical images displayed on the display panel 303 . A binarization unit 305 binarizes each pixel value of the image read from the image memory 304 . Specifically, the binarization unit 305 sets a pixel value equal to or lower than a predetermined threshold value to 0, and a pixel value exceeding the threshold value to 1. The threshold may be 0 or slightly greater than 0 to account for 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 which is displayed on the display panel 303 and includes a medical image 51 stored in the image memory 304 . An image 50 shown in FIG. 2 includes a medical image 51 obtained by photographing a part of the body, a directory structure display area 52 displaying a directory structure, and a function selection menu display area 53 displaying a function selection menu. and other images other than the medical image 51 are included.

In the medical image 51, the body is expressed 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 directory structure display area 52, the function selection menu display area 53, and other portions other than the medical image 51 generally have a pixel value of 1, except for characters displayed in black.

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

The corner detection unit 306 detects corners of a rectangular area with a black background by determining whether the read 41 pixels match a specific pattern.

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

When the corner detection unit 306 performs pattern matching using the patterns TL, TR, BL, and BR shown in FIGS. Some pixels may not exist. In such a case, the corner detection unit 306 interpolates pixels at pixel positions outside the image 50, as shown in FIG. As an example, the corner detection unit 306 interpolates pixels at pixel positions outside the image 50 with pixels at the top, bottom, left, and right edges of the image 50 .

Taking the upper left corner of the image 50 shown in FIG. 5 as an example, the pixels in the outer pixel positions are interpolated with the pixels P11 to P13 and P21, P31, P41, P51 located on the top line or left end. There are various methods for interpolating pixels at outer pixel positions, and the interpolation method is not limited to the one 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 is a pixel that matches at a predetermined ratio or more, the corner detection unit 306 stores the position information of that pixel in a built-in register. The predetermined ratio may be adjustable.

With the above processing, the corner detection unit 306 detects 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, as shown in FIG. position and the position of pixel Pc4 in the lower right corner.

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 a rectangular area has been detected when the following conditions are satisfied.

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

The horizontal pixel position (x) and the vertical pixel position (y) detected using the patterns TL, TR, BL, and BR stored in the register of the corner detection unit 306 are (x, y)=(100, 100), (300, 100), (100, 200), (300, 200). At this time, the area detection unit 307 detects an area having (x, y)=(100, 100) as the upper left corner and (x, y)=(300, 200) as the lower right corner as a rectangular area.

If one of the four corners cannot be detected by the corner detector 306 as shown in FIG. 7A, two diagonal corners are detected as shown in FIG. 7B. part may not be detected. In FIGS. 7A and 7B, hatched circles indicate detected corner pixels, and double-dot chain lines indicate corner pixels that could not be detected.

The area detection unit 307 may be considered to have detected a rectangular area in the case of (a) or (b) in FIG. At this time, the area detection unit 307 may substitute the position information of the detected corner pixels for the position information of the corner pixels that could not be detected.

Suppose that there is a non-medical image rectangular area in the image 50 other than the medical image 51, which is not a medical image but is expressed in black or gray close to black. At this time, the corner detection unit 306 may detect the corners of the rectangular area of the non-medical image, and the area detection unit 307 may erroneously detect the rectangular area of the non-medical image as the rectangular area of the medical image.

A rectangular region of a medical image usually has an aspect ratio within a predetermined range, and a rectangular region that is excessively horizontally or vertically elongated is highly likely not to be a rectangular region of a medical image. Therefore, the area detection unit 307 preferably excludes rectangular areas having aspect ratios outside the predetermined range, assuming that they are not rectangular areas 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 an instruction to cut out the medical image 51 is given by the operation unit 309 , the cutout region setting unit 308 cuts out the region of the medical image 51 from the image 50 stored in the image memory 304 , and saves the cutout image in the image memory 310 . supply to An image memory 310 stores the clipped image.

When an instruction to write the clipped image to the storage medium 4 is given by the operation unit 309 , the image writing control unit 311 reads the clipped image from the image memory 310 and stores it via the storage medium connection port 312 . Write to medium 4. As a result, an image obtained by cutting out only the region of the medical image 51 shown in FIG. 2 is stored in the storage medium 4 .

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, and in this case the storage medium connection port 312 is the connection port of the memory card.

FIG. 8 shows another example of an input image to the monitor 3. In FIG. An image 50 shown in FIG. 8 includes four medical images 501 to 504 and a function selection menu display area 53 . 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.

A binarization unit 305 binarizes the image 50 shown in FIG. Detect the pixel position.

The 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. FIG. 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 detection unit 306 detects the pixel positions of the corners of a plurality of rectangular areas, the area detection unit 307 determines whether or not the above conditions are satisfied in each rectangular area. Detect rectangular regions. Furthermore, the region detection unit 307 detects a composite region (composite image) obtained by combining two or more of the plurality of rectangular regions as a rectangular region.

When there are four medical images 501 to 504 as shown in FIG. 8, the area detection unit 307 detects rectangular areas as shown in (a) to (f) of FIG.

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

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

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

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

The operator of the monitor 3 selects a rectangular area to be cut out from the image 50 by the cutout area setting section 308 from among (a) to (f) in FIG. 9 by operating the operation section 309 . As indicated by arrows in FIG. 9, the clipping area setting unit 308 sequentially switches the rectangular areas shown in (a) to (f) in FIG.

In this way, the operator can easily select any one of the rectangular areas from (a) to (f) of FIG. When the monitor 3 is set to a mode in which a region of a medical image is extracted from the image 50 and written to the storage medium 4, a function of switching the rectangular region may be assigned to the operation button.

When (a) of FIG. 9 is selected, the clipping region setting unit 308 stores images in the image memory 310 in which each region of the medical images 501 to 504 is individually clipped out of the image 50 stored in the image memory 304. supply. Image memory 310 stores four images.

When an instruction to write the clipped images to the storage medium 4 is given by the operation unit 309 , the image writing control unit 311 reads the four clipped images from the image memory 310 and stores them via the storage medium connection port 312 . Write to medium 4. As a result, the images obtained by individually cutting out the medical images 501 to 504 shown in FIG. 8 are stored in the storage medium 4 .

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

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

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

Furthermore, as shown in FIG. 10, the clipping region setting unit 308 selectively clips only one medical image out of the medical images 501 to 504 in accordance with the operation of the operation unit 309, and stores the image in the image memory 310. may be supplied. In this way, only one medical image selected from among the medical images 501 to 504 can be stored in the storage medium 4. FIG.

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

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

The clipping region setting unit 308 can also select one clipping method from many clipping methods and clip a medical image from the image 50 by the selected clipping method.

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

Instead of sequentially switching medical images to be clipped out of the image 50, the clipping 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 an extraction method when a predetermined operation is performed using the operation unit 309 . The OSD superimposing unit 301 may display a menu instead of the image 50 on the display panel 303 or may superimpose the menu on the image 50 . The OSD superimposing unit 301 functions as a menu display unit.

In the example shown in FIG. 11 , the display panel 303 displays a first option “Cut out and save each medical image individually”, a second option “Cut out and save the entire medical image”, and “Manually Three options of the third option "select and save medical images" are displayed as a menu. The third option may be omitted and only the first and second options may be used.

The first option, as shown in FIG. 9(a), is to store in the storage medium 4 four images obtained by cutting out the medical images 501 to 504 individually. The second option is to cut out one composite image 500 including all of the medical images 501 to 504 and store it in the storage medium 4, as shown in FIG. 9(f). A third option is to directly select a medical image to be stored in the storage medium 4 as shown in FIG. 9 or 10 .

When the third option is selected, the medical images other than the medical images selected in the first option or 2 may be switched in order.

FIG. 12 conceptually shows a case where medical images 511 to 513 exist within an 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, it is possible to add a fourth option of "cut out and save maximum size medical image".

The first option, as shown in FIG. 14(a), is to store in the storage medium 4 three images obtained by cutting out the respective regions of the medical images 511 to 513 individually. A fourth option is to cut out a maximum size medical image 513 and store it in the storage medium 4, as shown in FIG. 14(b). A second option is to cut out one composite image 510 including all of the 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 of the medical images may be monochrome images and some of the medical images may be color images. The monitor 3 is required to apply appropriate image processing to each of the monochrome image and the color image and display them on the display panel 303 .

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

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

Assuming that the image data is 8 bits, the gamma table of DICOM GSDF and gamma 2.2 has input/output characteristics as shown in FIG. The gamma table generator 322 can generate gamma tables of DICOM GSDF and gamma 2.2 by calculation using formulas.

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 generator 322 is a gamma table holder.

The gamma correction unit 323 gamma-corrects the input image 50 according to the gamma table generated by the gamma table generation unit 322 and supplies the corrected image 50 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 determines whether 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 of the RGB signals that constitute the image data is equal to or less than a predetermined threshold value. When smaller, 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 a threshold value and is large, the color/monochrome determination unit 321 It is determined that the image is a color image. The difference threshold may be adjustable.

A medical image may be a pale blue or pale green image rather than a pure gray image. Therefore, the color/monochrome determination unit 321 determines that the ratio of the R signal, the G signal, and the B signal is the same in all pixels in the rectangular area of the medical image detected by the area detection unit 307, or the ratio is equal to or less than a predetermined threshold value. If the image is a predetermined single color image with a small difference in , it may be determined that the image is a monochrome image. The ratio threshold may be adjustable.

The color/monochrome determination unit 321 similarly determines whether the directory structure display area 52 and the function selection menu display area 53 are color images or monochrome images. The gamma correction section 323 similarly gamma-corrects the image in the directory structure display area 52 and the function selection menu display area 53 according to the gamma table generated by the gamma table generation section 322 .

According to the image clipping device and method of the present embodiment described above, it is possible to clip only the necessary medical image region from the image displayed on the monitor. Moreover, according to the image clipping device and method of the present embodiment, only the necessary medical image region can be clipped with a simple operation without the operator having to perform complicated operations.

By providing the image cropping device of the present embodiment on the monitor 3, even if the workstation 2 cannot transmit the medical image file to the outside 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 clipping device and method of the present embodiment, it is possible to clip only the necessary medical image region instead of capturing the image displayed on the monitor 3 as it is. Therefore, according to the image clipping device and method of the present embodiment, it is possible to clip while excluding unnecessary areas such as the directory structure of the PACS server or the function selection menu.

The present invention is not limited to the embodiments 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 may be configured by 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 composed of a microcomputer or a microprocessor of a microcomputer. The binarization unit 305 to cutout area setting unit 308 and image writing control unit 311 may be configured by a microprocessor. The image memories 304 and 310 may be composed of memories provided in a microcomputer.

3 monitor 4 storage medium 301 OSD superimposing unit 302 panel driving unit 303 display panel 304, 310 image memory 305 binarization unit 306 corner detection unit 307 area detection unit 308 clipping 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 displayed on a display panel and including a plurality of medical images having a black background area into a black level and a white level;
A diamond-shaped pixel group consisting of a plurality of pixels having a target pixel in the center is read from the binarized image binarized by the binarization unit, and the read diamond-shaped pixel group is arranged in a black level arrangement. a corner detection unit for determining whether or not each pattern matches four patterns for detecting corners in a rectangular area in response to and detecting the positions of pixels in the corners;
an area detection unit that detects a rectangular area of each of the plurality of medical images based on the positions of the corner pixels detected by the corner detection unit;
One medical image consisting of a rectangular area having the largest size among the plurality of medical images
selecting a first extraction method for extracting a medical image as a unit and a second extraction method for extracting a composite image including two or more of the plurality of medical images as a unit; a clipping region setting unit for clipping a medical image from an input image;
An image cropping device comprising: The corner detection unit shifts the pixel of interest in the binarized image by one pixel and determines whether or not it matches any of the four patterns at a predetermined rate or more, thereby searching for corner pixels. do,
2. The image cropping device according to claim 1. The corner detection unit interpolates an area where some of the pixels do not exist with pixels at the top and bottom or left and right ends of the binarized image when some of the pixels of the pixel group read out do not exist. to detect corners,
3. The image cropping device according to claim 2. binarizing an input image displayed on a display panel and including a plurality of medical images having black background regions into black and white levels;
From the binarized binarized image, a rhombus-shaped pixel group consisting of a plurality of pixels having a target pixel in the center is read out, and the read out rhombus-shaped pixel group is arranged in a rectangular area according to the arrangement of the black levels. Determining whether or not it matches the four patterns for detecting each corner, detecting the position of the pixel at the corner,
Detecting a rectangular region in each of the plurality of medical images based on the detected corner pixel positions;
A first cropping method for cropping one medical image as a unit, which consists of a rectangular area of a medical image having the largest size among the plurality of medical images, according to an input operation; Selecting either one of a second extraction method for extracting a composite image containing two or more of them as a unit,
An image cropping method for cropping a medical image from the input image by a selected cropping method.

Images