A REVIEW OF WAVELETS IN BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS

In this paper we present an overview of the various uses of the wavele t transform (WT) in medicine and biology. We start by describing the w avelet properties that are the most important for biomedical applicati ons. In particular, we provide an interpretation of the continuous wav elet transform (CWT) as a prewhitening multiscale matched filter. Me a lso briefly indicate the analogy between the WT and some of the biolog ical processing that occurs in the early components of the auditory an d visual system. We then review the rises of the WT for the analysis o f 1-D physiological signals obtained by phonocardiography, electrocard iography (ECC), and electroencephalography (EEG), including evoked res ponse Next, we provide a survey of recent wavelet developments in medi cal imaging. These include biomedical image processing algorithms (e.g ., noise reduction, image enhancement, and detection of microcalcifica tions in mammograms), image reconstruction and acquisition schemes (to mography, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)), and multiresolution m ethods for the registration and statistical analysis of functional ima ges of the brain (positron emission tomography (PET) and functional MR I (fMRI)). In each case, we provide the reader with some general backg round information and a brief explanation of how the methods work.