Digital image processing for detection of wooden foreign bodies in plain radiographs of chicken thighs

Contrast enhancement was studied to improve the detection of wooden foreign bodies in Emergency Department radiographs. Wood inserted into chicken thighs served as models of puncture wounds in the human hand. Digitized plain-film radiographs of chicken thighs with and without foreign bodies were processed with various contrast enhancement algorithms. Results from the two most promising techniques were evaluated by a physician with training in radiology, and computation times and subjective performance of these algorithms were compared. Use of these two techniques led to better detection of foreign bodies in the enhanced images than in the original radiographs.