Japanese researchers use free software to enhance dental images

Optical microscopes are useful tools that can be used to help dentists perform endodontic procedures such as root canal therapy. However, although high-quality still images can be obtained using a 35mm film or CCD camera, the quality of images produced by a video camera is significantly lower.

To address that issue, a team of Japanese researchers led by Masataka Suehara from the Tokyo Dental College has used free software called RegiStax to create high-quality still images from a continuous video stream from an optical microscope.

Registax software, which can be used for the alignment, stacking and processing of images, was been developed by a team of developers led by Netherlands-based Cor Berrevoets.

The Japanese researchers used it to align and stack and sequences of video frames from a Sony (Tokyo, Japan) DXC-107 digital video camera attached to a Mani (Utsunomiya, Japan) IMS22Z microscope. After doing so, they performed a wavelet transformation on the image which adjusted the intensity of the image based on the spatial frequencies present in it.

After evaluating the results using Scion Image software which is bundled with the Registax software, they found that the quality and the depth of field of the images were higher than those from a still-camera.

A paper describing the research is available on the Internet here.

The RegiStax software can be downloaded from the RegiStax web site here.

-- Dave Wilson, Senior Editor, Vision Systems Design