Artif Intell Rev (2010) 34:195204

DOI 10.1007/s10462-010-9169-7

A new method for MR grayscale inhomogeneity

correction
M. A. Balafar A. R. Ramli
S. Mashohor

Published online: 3 June 2010

Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Abstract Intensity inhomogeneity is a smooth intensity change inside originally homogeneous regions. Filter-based inhomogeneity correction methods have been commonly used
in literatures. However, there are few literatures which compare effectiveness of these methods for inhomogeneity correction. In this paper, a new filter-based inhomogeneity correction
method is proposed and the effectiveness of the proposed method and other filter-based inhomogeneity correction methods are compared. The methods with different kernel sizes are
applied on MRI brain images and the quality of inhomogeneity correction of different methods are compared quantitatively. Experimental results show the proposed method in a kernel
size of 20 * 20 performs almost better than or equal the performance of other methods in all
kernel sizes.
Keywords

Inhomogeneity correction Max filter Brain MRI

1 Introduction
The application of image processing techniques has rapidly increased in recent years (Balafar
et al 2008a). Medical image segmentation is a crucial part of many computer-aided diagnostic tools (Balafar et al 2008b). Intensity inhomogeneity hinders the automatic segmentation
of medical images (Balafar et al 2010a,b,c). Intensity inhomogeneity is a smooth intensity
change inside tissues with the phenomenon usually referred as intensity inhomogeneity,
intensity non-uniformity, shading or bias field (Vovk et al 2007). Inhomogeneity can be
M. A. Balafar (B) A. R. Ramli S. Mashohor
Department of Computer and Communication Systems, Faculty of Engineering, University
Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
e-mail: gs19162@mutiara.upm.edu.my; balafarila@yahoo.com
A. R. Ramli
e-mail: arr@putra.upm.edu.my
S. Mashohor
e-mail: syamsiah@eng.upm.edu.my

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found in different imaging modalities, such as microscopy, computed tomography, ultrasound, and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Inhomogeneity is hardly visible to the user.
But even invisible one is enough to degrade segmentation results (Balafar et al 2008c,d,e,f).
Therefore, inhomogeneity correction improves the performance of segmentation algorithms
(Balafar et al 2010d,e), Moreover, generally inhomogeneity degrades the performance of
clustering algorithms. (Delibasic 2009; Fernndez 2008; Lorena et al. 2008; Smail Linda
2009) Inhomogeneity can be caused by radio frequency (RF) pulse attenuation in tissue,
non-uniform RF coil transmission and sensitivity, non-uniformity in the scanners magnetic
field, gradient-induced eddy currents, RF standing waves, magnetic susceptibility of tissue,
and inter-slice cross talk (Brinkmann et al 1998).
Early research in this field was in (Haselgrove and Prammer 1986). Since then,
extensive research has been done. Inhomogeneity correction methods are categorized
into two groups: prospective methods and retrospective methods. First one, consider
inhomogeneity as an error of the imaging process that can be corrected by estimating
the inhomogeneity field of an MRI acquisition system. These methods are as follows:
Phantom-based (Vovk et al 2007), Multi-coil (Brey and Narayana 1988) and Special
sequences (Solanas and Thiran 2001). The second group does not assume any information about acquisition methods and is more general. These methods are as follows: surface fitting methods (Vovk et al 2007; Meyer et al 1995; Lai and Fang 1999;
Koivula et al 1999), segmentation-based (Guillemaud and Brady 1997; Gispert et al
2004; Bansal et al 2004; Andersen et al 2002), histogram-based methods (Vovk et al
2007), high-frequency maximization, information minimization (Likar et al 2001; Mangin 2000; Solanas and Thiran 2001; Learned-Miller and Ahammad 2004; Vovk et al
2004), and histogram matching and filtering methods. (Vovk et al 2007, Guillemaud
and Brady 1997) Two most important filtering inhomogeneity correction methods are
homomorphic filtering and homomorphic unsharp masking which will be discussed in
detail.
Homomorphic filtering is a filter method. The image background is usually altered; then,
log-transform of input image is subtracted by log-transform of its low-pass filtered via homomorphic filter (Vovk et al 2007). When homomorphic filtering is performed a streak artefact is produced on the boundary between tissues. Guillemaud proposed to eliminate this
artefact on boundary between the background and the object by applying a filter on the
object (Guillemaud and Brady 1997).
Filtering methods consider inhomogeneity as low-frequency artefact. This assumption is
valid if there is no image information in low frequency that might be eliminated by low-pass
filter. For most of medical images this assumption is not correct. Moreover, a streak artefact
produced on edges and it is known as edge effect. To make these methods more effective, we
proposed a new method to correct inhomogeneity with max filter. To evaluate our method,
we compared the effectiveness of our method with the previous state-of-art filtering method
for inhomogeneity correction.

2 A new method for MR greyscale inhomogeneity correction

The focus of this section is introducing a filter-based algorithm for inhomogeneity correction.
Filter-based methods consider inhomogeneity as low-frequency artefact. This assumption is
valid if there were no image information in low frequency that might be eliminated by
low-pass filter. This assumption is not valid on all medical images. In addition, these methods produce a streak artefact on edges known as edge effect. To make these methods more

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effective, a new method to correct inhomogeneity with max filter is proposed in this section. Generally, intensity inhomogeneity is considered as a smooth spatially varying function
which alters intensity inside originally homogeneity regions and it is considered as multiplicative or additive. In MR images, noise is considered independent of inhomogeneity and
inhomogeneous image is modelled as multiplicative of homogeneous image and inhomogeneity bias field plus noise:
Ih = I b + n

(1)

where Ih is the inhomogeneous image, I is the same image without inhomogeneity, b is

inhomogeneity bias field and n is noise.
The inhomogeneous image is assumed to be de-noised and input image is modelled as
multiplicative of homogeneous image and inhomogeneity bias field as follows:
Ih = I b

(2)

Therefore, bias field is estimated and then homogeneous image is estimated by dividing
inhomogeneous image on estimated bias field as follows:
I = Ih /b

(3)

If only white matter is considered, bias field is calculated with following equation:
b = Ih /Iw

(4)

where Iw is grey level of white matter in homogeneous image which is a fixed value.
Intensity adjusting is done at the end of algorithm; therefore, the fixed value of Iw in the
above equation can be eliminated and inhomogeneous image can be considered as bias field.
It is assumed that in a large size neighbourhood of pixels, for example 30*30, there is at
least one pixel from white matter with highest grey level. In addition, usually inhomogeneity
bias field of neighbour pixels are the same or of similar value. As a result, pixel from white
matter (maximum grey level) in the neighbourhood of a pixel is a good approximation for
inhomogeneity bias field in that pixel.
Therefore, it is proposed to use max filter for inhomogeneity correction and the homogeneous image is obtained by dividing inhomogeneous image on max filtered input image as
follows:
I = Ih /Im

(5)

where Im is the max filter of inhomogeneous image.

Background pixels do not give any effect on max filter results. Therefore, this algorithm does not create homomorphic filtering streak artefact. Figure 1a shows an example
of in-homogeneous image with 80% inhomogeneity and Fig. 2b represents the result of
applying max filter with neighbourhood size 30 * 30 on inhomogeneous image (detail about
neighbourhood size can be found in the result section). Figure 1b shows that the max filter
result is representative for bias field.
The neighbourhood size in max filter is a very important parameter. If it were too small,
it is possible that the neighbourhood does not contain pixel with high grey level (pixel from
white matter). As a result, the estimated bias field would not give satisfactory approximation
and the corrected image would be almost equal to the input image. On the other hand, if it
were too big, bias field would be estimated by pixel with long distance and estimated bias
field would not produce good approximation.

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Fig. 1 a An inhomogeneous image with 80% inhomogeneity and b obtained biased field for the input image

Fig. 2 a Inhomogeneity corrected of an input image and b intensity adjusting of the image (a)

Figure 2a shows the corrected image of the input image which was obtained by dividing
the input image in Fig. 1a on the obtained bias field in Fig. 1b. Figure 2a shows that the
dynamic range of the corrected image is not the same as that of the input image Fig 1a.
In order to solve this problem, intensity adjustment is performed to preserve the intensity
dynamics of the input image. In this research, the intensity of corrected image is adjusted to
preserve the maximum or mean intensity of the input image. Figure 2b shows the intensity
adjustment result of the corrected image in Fig. 2a.
The following steps summarize the proposed method:
1.

Apply max filter to an inhomogeneous image (Fig. 1a) and consider result as bias field
(Fig. 1b):
I bias = Max(image)

2.

(6)

Subtract log of the filtered image from that of the inhomogeneous image:
log I corr = log(image) log(I bias)

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(7)

A new method for MR grayscale inhomogeneity correction

3.

Obtain the corrected image from the last result (Fig. 2a):
I corr = exp(log I corr )

4.

199

(8)

Perform intensity adjustment to preserve initial dynamics (Fig. 2b):

I nor m =

Or

I corr min(I corr )

. max(image)
max(I corr ) min(I corr )
I nor m =

mean(image)
.I corr
mean(I corr )

(9)

(10)

3 Experimental results
Simulated T1 images used in this study are from the (BrainWeb) database. The brain images
contain 4 tissues: grey matter (GM), white matter (WM), CSF and background. In addition,
we use the bias field from (BrainWeb) which is not linear, but is a slowly-varying field of
a complex shape. The different versions of these bias fields are created with different total
variation. Experimental results on different total variation repeated the same facts. Therefore,
in over to avoid redundancy, results for bias fields with total variation of 40% and 80% are
reported. The image was resized to match the dimensions of the testing image. Homomorphic and proposed inhomogeneity correction algorithms were simulated and applied on T1
images.
Homomorphic filtering has two approaches:
1.
2.

Using background information or delete them.

Using the maximum or mean intensity preserve at the end of inhomogeneity correction
algorithms to preserve intensity dynamic range in the corrected image. Previous inhomogeneity correction algorithms usually use these two intensity preserving methods.

The result of inhomogeneity correction by homomorphic algorithm with and without background are compared. The Jaccard similarity index (Zijdenbos and Dawant 1994) which
widely was used by researchers to measure similarity between to images, is used to measure
similarity between clustering result for inhomogeneity corrected image and manual segmentation. The Jaccard similarity index is the degree of matching between ground truth and
segmentation result for a class pixels. Figure 3 shows the Jaccard similarity index for grey
inhomogeneity corrected image by homomorphic algorithm. Boundaries in image are not
sharp; therefore, at small kernel sizes, neighborhood of boundary pixels most likely are not
background pixels. As a result, homomorphic algorithm with background at small kernel
sizes produces better results. But generally, homomorphic algorithm without background
produces more similarities. Therefore, when homomorphic algorithm is used, background
pixels are ignored.
Then, the effect of two intensity preservings on the performance of homomorphic and the
proposed inhomogeneity correction algorithms are investigated.
Figures 4 and 5 demonstrate the quality of inhomogeneity correction with mean and
max preserve. The figure 4 shows the Jaccard similarity index for inhomogeneity-corrected
image by proposed inhomogeneity correction algorithm with mean and max preserve. Proposed algorithm with mean preserve produces more similarities. Therefore, for the rest of
the experiment, mean preserve is used for the proposed algorithm.

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Fig. 3 The Jaccard similarity index for inhomogeneity-corrected image (image with 80% inhomogeneity) by
homomorphic filtering with and without background. a With mean preserve. b With max preserve

Figure 5 demonstrates Jaccard similarity index for inhomogeneity-corrected image by

homomorphic algorithm with mean and max preserve. Homomorphic algorithm with mean
preserve produces more similarities. Therefore, for the rest of the experiment, mean preserve
is used for homomorphic filtering. Homomorphic algorithm uses mean filter for inhomogeneity estimation. At small kernel sizes, the mean filtered images are similar to input image.
Therefore, mean preserve and max preserve produce similar results.

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Fig. 4 The Jaccard similarity index for inhomogeneity-corrected image (image with 80% inhomogeneity) by
proposed algorithm with mean and max preserve

Fig. 5 The Jaccard similarity index for inhomogeneity-corrected image (image with 80% inhomogeneity) by
homomorphic filtering with mean and max preserve

Now, the performance of homomorphic algorithm and proposed algorithm are compared.
Figure 6 illustrates the similarity of homogenous image and inhomogeneity-corrected image
using different inhomogeneity correction algorithm at various kernel sizes. In Fig. 6a, 40%
of the non-linear bias field is used and in Fig. 6b, 80% of the non-linear bias field is used.
The proposed algorithm, in kernel size (20 * 20), outperforms homomorphic algorithm in all
kernel sizes. The performance of the proposed algorithm is higher at small kernel sizes and

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Fig. 6 The Jaccard similarity index for inhomogeneity-corrected image by homomorphic filtering and the
proposed algorithm. a With 40% inhomogeneity. b With 80% inhomogeneity

it is lower in bigger kernel sizes. In addition, the performance of the proposed algorithm
is lower at small kernel sizes and it is higher in bigger kernel sizes. But, the performance
of the proposed algorithm in much bigger when kernel sizes decreases. The following two
paragraphs explains the reasons for these performances.

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The proposed algorithm approximates grey inhomogeneity using the maximum value in
the neighborhood. The performance of the proposed algorithm is higher at small kernel sizes
because it approximates inhomogeneity with near pixel which most likely is similar to real
inhomogeneity. But it is lower in bigger kernel sizes because it takes inhomogeneity from a
far neighbor which is far from real inhomogeneity, so inhomogeneity correction is less.
Homomorphic algorithm considers inhomogeneity a low-frequency artefact and uses mean
filter for inhomogeneity estimation. At small kernel sizes, the mean filtered images are similar to input image and correction is less. As the kernel size increases, kernel contains representation of a tissue and low frequency information is approximated more accurate. As kernel
size increases more, kernel contains representation of more than a tissue and estimation will
have high-frequency information, too.

4 Conclusion
There are many methods for inhomogeneity correction, each of them providing different
quality of correction. After removing inhomogeneity, it is much easier to segment an image
correctly. All methods approximate inhomogeneity field; therefore, none of them is ideal. In
this paper, a new filter-based method for inhomogeneity correction is proposed. Unlike the
previous filter-based methods, proposed method does not consider inhomogeneity field as
low frequency information. The proposed algorithm uses max filter for inhomogeneity correction. The similarity between inhomogeneity corrected image and manual segmentation
is used to compare filter-based methods and proposed method for grey-scale inhomogeneity
correction in MR images. In order to evaluate, we used simulated images and biased them
with none linear-based inhomogeneity fields.
The methods with kernel sizes from 10 * 10 to 100 * 100 is applied to images and quantitative analysis is used to evaluate different methods in different kernel sizes. Experimental
results show that the new method in kernel size of 20 * 20, does almost better than or equal
the performance of other filter-based methods in all kernel sizes. For filter-based inhomogeneity correction methods, the optimal kernel size depends on the complexity of image and
inhomogeneity field. In our method, optimal kernel size is 20 * 20. Filter-based methods are
very fast and simple to implement and can be effective for inhomogeneity correction in MR
images. Future work includes the comparison of the quality of all inhomogeneity correction methods with quantitative methods. Moreover, we consider combining our method with
clustering-based methods.

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