A common observation about confocal microscopy images is that lower image stacks have lower voxel intensities and are usually blurred in comparison with the upper ones. The key reasons are light absorption and scattering by the objects and particles in the volume through which light passes. This report proposes a new technique to reduce such noise impacts in terms of an adaptive intensity compensation and structural sharpening algorithm. With these image-processing procedures, effective 3D rendering techniques can be applied to faithfully visualize confocal microscopy data.
Copyright 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc.