A METHOD FOR MAXIMIZING FIDELITY AND DYNAMIC RANGE FOR A REGION OF IN- TEREST WITHIN DIGITIZED MEDICAL IMAGE DISPLAY

A method and apparatus is presented in which a medical imagery workstation provides an end-user interface which when activated, windows and levels a whole image or a region of interest within the image utilizing the pixel values within a selection area. The method and apparatus customizes the pixel values when the entire image is selected before calculating the window and levels to produce a higher contrast, then redraws the entire image utilizing the newly calculated window and level values. The present invention provides a method and apparatus to enable an operator to define a region of interest, that when activated, the image is redrawn utilizing only the pixel values from the region of interest, maximizing the brightness and contrast of the selected.