mpadded with background, and absolute voffset attribute value
<math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mi>H</mi> <mstyle mathbackground="yellow"> <mpadded voffset=".4em"> <mi>x</mi> <mo>+</mo> <mi>b</mi> </mpadded> </mstyle> <mfrac> <mn>1</mn> <mn>2</mn> </mfrac> </math>
Author: Robert Miner, Design Science, Inc.