Automatic Segmentation and Inpainting of Specular Highlights for Endoscopic Imaging

Minimally invasive medical procedures have become increasingly common in today's healthcare practice. Images taken during such procedures largely show tissues of human organs, such as the mucosa of the gastrointestinal tract. These surfaces usually have a glossy appearance showing specular highlights. For many visual analysis algorithms, these distinct and bright visual features can become a significant source of error. In this article, we propose two methods to address this problem: (a) a segmentation method based on nonlinear filtering and colour image thresholding and (b) an efficient inpainting method. The inpainting algorithm eliminates the negative effect of specular highlights on other image analysis algorithms and also gives a visually pleasing result. The methods compare favourably to the existing approaches reported for endoscopic imaging. Furthermore, in contrast to the existing approaches, the proposed segmentation method is applicable to the widely used sequential RGB image acquisition systems.