Progressive tone mapping of brain images at single-neuron resolution

This paper presents a novel tone mapping method for the display of high dynamic range (HDR) 3D brain images at single-neuron resolution, where the fluorescent labeled neurons exhibit extremely high local contrast. Existing tone mapping methods fit for natural images cannot well preserve the details of neurons in the 3D brain image, and require huge memory when the image resolution is ultra high. Therefore, we propose a block-wise, progressive tone mapping strategy for efficient and high quality display of such image, which further offers two different modes for optimum global or local visual experience. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly improves the visualization quality of high contrast neurons in HDR brain images compared with existing methods.