New technique for the visualization of high dynamic range infrared images
01 Sep 2009-Optical Engineering (International Society for Optics and Photonics)-Vol. 48, Iss: 9, pp 096401
TL;DR: A new dynamic range compression technique for infrared (IR) imaging systems that enhances details visibility and allows the control and adjustment of the image appearance by setting a number of tunable parameters is proposed.
Abstract: We propose a new dynamic range compression technique for infrared (IR) imaging systems that enhances details visibility and allows the control and adjustment of the image appearance by setting a number of tunable parameters. This technique adopts a bilateral filter to extract a details component and a coarse component. The two components are processed independently and then recombined to obtain the output-enhanced image that fits the display dynamic range. The contribution made is threefold. We propose a new technique for the visualization of high dynamic range (HDR) images that is specifically tailored to IR images. We show the effectiveness of the method by analyzing experimental IR images that represent typical area surveillance and object recognition applications. Last, we quantitatively assess the performance of the proposed technique, comparing the quality of the enhanced image with that obtained through two well-established visualization methods.
Citations
More filters
TL;DR: A new method of display and detail enhancement for high dynamic range infrared images is presented that effectively maps the raw acquired infrared image to 8-bit domain based on the same architecture of bilateral filter and dynamic range partitioning approach.
Abstract: Dynamic range reduction and detail enhancement are two important issues for effectively displaying high-dynamic-range images acquired by thermal camera systems. They must be performed in such a way that the high dynamic range image signal output from sensors is compressed in a pleasing manner for display on lower dynamic range monitors without reducing the perceptibility of small details. In this paper, a new method of display and detail enhancement for high dynamic range infrared images is presented. This method effectively maps the raw acquired infrared image to 8-bit domain based on the same architecture of bilateral filter and dynamic range partitioning approach. It includes three main steps: First, a bilateral filter is applied to separate the input image into the base component and detail component. Second, refine the base and detail layer using an adaptive Gaussian filter to avoid unwanted artifacts. Then the base layer is projected to the display range and the detail layer is enhanced using an adaptive gain control approach. Finally, the two parts are recombined and quantized to 8-bit domain. The strength of the proposed method lies in its ability to avoid unwanted artifacts and adaptability in different scenarios. Its great performance is validated by the experimental results tested with two real infrared imagers.
78 citations
Additional excerpts
...H (x) = { 0 for nx < T 1 for nx ≥ T , (11)...
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TL;DR: This paper proposes a new method for detail enhancement and noise reduction of high dynamic range infrared images that is significantly better than those based on histogram equalization (HE), and it also has better visual effect than bilateral filter-based methods.
61 citations
TL;DR: A new scene-based NUC technique based on bilateral filter has been developed that separates the original input frames into two parts and it estimates the NUC parameters only by using the residuals.
Abstract: A thorough analysis of low convergence speed and ghosting artifacts in temporal high-pass filter correction has been undertaken in this paper and it has found out that the keys of these problems are the interference of a large sum of unrelated scene information in the nonuniformity correction (NUC) process. In order to overcome these drawbacks, a new scene-based NUC technique based on bilateral filter has been developed. This method separates the original input frames into two parts and it estimates the NUC parameters only by using the residuals. The experimental results have shown that it can significantly increase convergence speed and reduce ghosting artifacts.
60 citations
TL;DR: Based on the adaptive double plateaus histogram equalization, the authors presented an improved contrast enhancement algorithm for infrared thermal images, where the normalized coefficient of variation of the histogram, which characterizes the level of contrast enhancement, is introduced as feedback information to adjust the upper and lower plateau thresholds.
33 citations
TL;DR: A new approach to display HDR IR images with contrast enhancement by using the local edge-preserving filter and an adaptive Gamma transformation to adjust the gray distribution of the base layer, and stretch the detail layer based on a human visual effect principle.
32 citations
References
More filters
04 Jan 1998
TL;DR: In contrast with filters that operate on the three bands of a color image separately, a bilateral filter can enforce the perceptual metric underlying the CIE-Lab color space, and smooth colors and preserve edges in a way that is tuned to human perception.
Abstract: Bilateral filtering smooths images while preserving edges, by means of a nonlinear combination of nearby image values. The method is noniterative, local, and simple. It combines gray levels or colors based on both their geometric closeness and their photometric similarity, and prefers near values to distant values in both domain and range. In contrast with filters that operate on the three bands of a color image separately, a bilateral filter can enforce the perceptual metric underlying the CIE-Lab color space, and smooth colors and preserve edges in a way that is tuned to human perception. Also, in contrast with standard filtering, bilateral filtering produces no phantom colors along edges in color images, and reduces phantom colors where they appear in the original image.
8,738 citations
TL;DR: The mathematics of a lightness scheme that generates lightness numbers, the biologic correlate of reflectance, independent of the flux from objects is described.
Abstract: Sensations of color show a strong correlation with reflectance, even though the amount of visible light reaching the eye depends on the product of reflectance and illumination. The visual system must achieve this remarkable result by a scheme that does not measure flux. Such a scheme is described as the basis of retinex theory. This theory assumes that there are three independent cone systems, each starting with a set of receptors peaking, respectively, in the long-, middle-, and short-wavelength regions of the visible spectrum. Each system forms a separate image of the world in terms of lightness that shows a strong correlation with reflectance within its particular band of wavelengths. These images are not mixed, but rather are compared to generate color sensations. The problem then becomes how the lightness of areas in these separate images can be independent of flux. This article describes the mathematics of a lightness scheme that generates lightness numbers, the biologic correlate of reflectance, independent of the flux from objects
3,480 citations
TL;DR: A new technique for the display of high-dynamic-range images, which reduces the contrast while preserving detail, is presented, based on a two-scale decomposition of the image into a base layer.
Abstract: We present a new technique for the display of high-dynamic-range images, which reduces the contrast while preserving detail. It is based on a two-scale decomposition of the image into a base layer,...
1,715 citations
01 Jul 2002
TL;DR: A new technique for the display of high-dynamic-range images, which reduces the contrast while preserving detail, is presented, based on a two-scale decomposition of the image into a base layer, encoding large-scale variations, and a detail layer.
Abstract: We present a new technique for the display of high-dynamic-range images, which reduces the contrast while preserving detail. It is based on a two-scale decomposition of the image into a base layer, encoding large-scale variations, and a detail layer. Only the base layer has its contrast reduced, thereby preserving detail. The base layer is obtained using an edge-preserving filter called the bilateral filter. This is a non-linear filter, where the weight of each pixel is computed using a Gaussian in the spatial domain multiplied by an influence function in the intensity domain that decreases the weight of pixels with large intensity differences. We express bilateral filtering in the framework of robust statistics and show how it relates to anisotropic diffusion. We then accelerate bilateral filtering by using a piecewise-linear approximation in the intensity domain and appropriate subsampling. This results in a speed-up of two orders of magnitude. The method is fast and requires no parameter setting.
1,612 citations
01 Sep 2003
TL;DR: A fast, high quality tone mapping technique to display high contrast images on devices with limited dynamic range of luminance values and taking into account user preference concerning brightness, contrast compression, and detail reproduction is proposed.
Abstract: We propose a fast, high quality tone mapping technique to display high contrast images on devices with limited dynamic range of luminance values. The method is based on logarithmic compression of luminance values, imitating the human response to light. A bias power function is introduced to adaptively vary logarithmic bases, resulting in good preservation of details and contrast. To improve contrast in dark areas, changes to the gamma correction procedure are proposed. Our adaptive logarithmic mapping technique is capable of producing perceptually tuned images with high dynamic content and works at interactive speed. We demonstrate a successful application of our tone mapping technique with a high dynamic range video player enabling to adjust optimal viewing conditions for any kind of display while taking into account user preference concerning brightness, contrast compression, and detail reproduction.
793 citations