Patent ID: 8295565

Claim:
A method of image quality assessment to produce standardized images for use in archive-quality electronic medical records and in CAD systems comprising: collecting a raw image free from glare during an examination with a digital imager, wherein said raw image contains a region of interest having borders, a border length and a border width, that define an image area within said borders, and an image center, and wherein said region of interest contains a region of interest area and a region of interest mass center; locating said region of interest using an image classification algorithm; applying a region assessment to said region of interest to detect incorrect camera zooming, incorrect camera positioning, and obstructions; performing a contrast assessment on said region of interest using a histogram-based algorithm that generates a contrast histogram having peaks, ranges, and channels, including a red channel, and determining whether said contrast assessment is satisfactory from peaks of said contrast histogram in said red channel; running a blur assessment without a reference image, wherein said blur assessment step comprises dividing said region of interest into non-overlapping blocks, computing a local measurement for each of said blocks based on frequency information using an image power spectrum to produce a two-dimensional display of said image power spectrum, converting said two-dimensional display to a one-dimensional display, separating said one-dimensional display into a low frequency area, a high frequency area and a noise area, and determining a degree of blur for each of said bocks by calculating the ratio of said low-frequency area to said high-frequency area, and using said degree of blur to determine if said block is a blurred block; determining the percentage of blurred blocks to determine if said image is blurry; and using contamination detection to detect obstructions using a training stage and a classification algorithm to produce said standardized images.