Investigation of Effects of Digital Image Processing on Improvement of Images Acquired with a Fiber-Optic Plate Microscope System

Effects of digital image processing on improvement of images acquired with a fiber-optic microscope system wereestimated. A raw image of cultured cells stained with a fluorescent dye was noisy and had insufficient contrast forobservation of a detailed image. To improve the image quality, two series of techniques were performed. Forobservations of static specimens, integration of consecutive frames was effective in reducing the randomnoise. Histogram transformation operations improved the contrast of the integrated images, providing a clearer detailedimage. For observations of moving specimens, spatial filtering for smoothing the image acquired by freezing one framewas effective in reducing random noise. The contrast of the image was also enhanced with the same histogramtransformation operations. Spatial filtering for the purpose of sharpening images enhanced the partition patterns ofoptical fibers constituting the fiber-optic plate. They were successfully removed by two-dimensional fast Fouriertransform