sustainability Article Pipeline for Advanced Contrast Enhancement (PACE) of Chest X-ray in Evaluating COVID-19 Patients by Combining Bidimensional Empirical Mode Decomposition and Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE) Giulio Siracusano 1, Aurelio La Corte 1 , Michele Gaeta 2,*, Giuseppe Cicero 2, Massimo Chiappini 3,4,* and Giovanni Finocchio 3,5,* 1 Department of Electric, Electronic and Computer Engineering, University of Catania, Viale Andrea Doria 6, 95125 Catania, Italy;
[email protected] (G.S.);
[email protected] (A.L.C.) 2 Department of Biomedical Sciences, Dental and of Morphological and Functional Images, University of Messina, Via Consolare Valeria 1, 98125 Messina, Italy;
[email protected] 3 Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV), Via di Vigna Murata 605, I-00143 Roma, Italy 4 Maris Scarl, via Vigna Murata 606, 00143 Roma, Italy 5 Department of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Physical Sciences and Earth Sciences, V.le F. Stagno D’Alcontres 31, University of Messina, 98166 Messina, Italy * Correspondence:
[email protected] (M.G.);
[email protected] (M.C.); gfi
[email protected] (G.F.) Received: 12 September 2020; Accepted: 6 October 2020; Published: 16 October 2020 Abstract: COVID-19 is a new pulmonary disease which is driving stress to the hospitals due to the large number of cases worldwide. Imaging of lungs can play a key role in the monitoring of health status. Non-contrast chest computed tomography (CT) has been used for this purpose, mainly in China, with significant success. However, this approach cannot be massively used, mainly for both high risk and cost, also in some countries, this tool is not extensively available.