IMAGE ENHANCEMENT INTRODUCTION

Image Enhancement
Image Enhancement: is the process that improves the quality of

the image for a specific application The reasons for doing this include: Highlighting interesting detail in images Removing noise from images Making images more visually appealing

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Image Enhancement Examples

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

Image Enhancement Examples (cont)

Image Enhancement(cont)
There are two broad categories of image enhancement techniques Spatial domain techniques

Direct manipulation of image pixels Manipulation of Fourier transform or wavelet transform of an image

Frequency domain techniques

Spatial Domain Fundamentals

Generally, aggregate of pixels composing an image. Spatial domain methods

are procedures that operate directly on these pixels. Spatial domain processes will be denoted by the expression: g(x,y) = T [f(x,y)] Where f(x,y) in the input image, g(x,y) is the processed image and T is as operator on f, defined over some neighborhood of (x,y)

Gray Level Transformation Function, T(r)

The simplest form of T, is when the neighborhood of size 1X1 (that is a

single pixel). In this case, g depends only on the value of f at (x,y), and T becomes a grey-level (also called intensity or mapping) transformation function of the form: s = T (r) Where, for simplicity in notation, r and s are variables denoting, respectively, the grey level of f(x,y) and g(x,y) at any point (x,y)

Examples of Enhancement Techniques

Contrast Stretching: If T(r) has the form as shown in the figure below, the effect of applying the transformation to every pixel of f to generate the corresponding pixels in g would: Produce higher contrast than the original image, by: Darkening the levels below m in the original image Brightening the levels above m in the original image
So, Contrast Stretching: is a simple image enhancement technique that improves the contrast in an image by stretching the range of intensity values it contains to span a desired range of values. Typically, it uses a linear function

Thresholding Is a limited case of contrast stretching, it produces a two-level (binary) image.

Some fairly simple, yet powerful, processing approaches can be formulated with grey-level transformations. Because enhancement at any point in an image depends only on the gray level at that point, techniques in this category often are referred to as point processing.

Mask processing or Filtering Larger neighborhoods allow considerable more flexibility. The general approach is to use a function of the values of f in a predefined neighborhood of (x,y) to determine the value of g at (x,y).One of the principal approaches in this formulation is based on the use of so-called masks (also referred to as filters)
So, a mask/filter: is a small (say 3X3) 2-D array, such as the one shown in the figure, in which the values of the mask coefficients determine the nature of the process, such as image sharpening. Enhancement techniques based on this type of approach often are referred to as mask processing or filtering.
W1 W4 W7 W2 W5 W8 W3 W6 W9

3X3 MASK

Some gray level transformations

Three basic types of functions used for image enhancement

Negative Transformation Logarithmic Power-law Piece-wise linear transformation Image negatives Is obtained by using the negative transformation s=L-1-r Produces the equivalent of a photographic negative Suited for enhancing white or gray detail embedded in dark regions of an image

Image Negative

Log transformations The general form of the log transformation : s=clog(1+r) Expand the values of dark pixels while compressing the high-level values Compress the dynamic range of images with large variations

Log Transform

Power-law transformation
The basic form: s = cr ^
Same function as in log transform ,but gives better result than log

transform. Gamma correction CRT device have an intensity-to-voltage response that is a power function Produce images that are darker than intended Is important if displaying an image accurately on a computer screen

Powerlaw Transform

Piecewise-linear transformation Advantage: the form of piecewise functions can be arbitrary complex over the previous functions Disadvantage: require considerably more user input Types (i) Contrast stretching One of the simplest piecewise function, which is used to enhance the low contrast image. Increase the dynamic range of the gray levels in the image Low contrast images may result from: Poor illumination Wrong setting of lens aperture during image acquisition

 Figure 3.10(a) shows a typical transformation used for contrast stretching.

The locations of points (r1, s1) and (r2, s2) control the shape of the transformation function. If r1 = s1 and r2 = s2, the transformation is a linear function that produces no changes in gray levels. If r1 = r2, s1 = 0 and s2 = L-1, the transformation becomes a thresholding function that creates a binary image. Intermediate values of (r1, s1) and (r2, s2) produce various degrees of spread in the gray levels of the output image, thus affecting its contrast. In general, r1 r2 and s1 s2 is assumed, so the function is always increasing.

 Figure 3.10(b) shows an 8-bit image with low contrast.

Fig. 3.10(c) shows the result of contrast stretching, obtained by setting (r1,

s1) = (rmin, 0) and (r2, s2) = (rmax,L-1) where rmin and rmax denote the minimum and maximum gray levels in the image, respectively. Thus, the transformation function stretched the levels linearly from their original range to the full range [0, L-1]. Finally, Fig. 3.10(d) shows the result of using the thresholding function defined previously, with r1=r2=m, the mean gray level in the image.

(ii) Gray level slicing Highlight a specific range of gray levels Display a high value for all gray levels in the range of interest and a low value for all other gray levels : produce a binary image It can be implemented in several ways, but the two basic themes are: One approach is to display a high value for all gray levels in the range of interest and a low value for all other gray levels. This transformation, shown in Fig 3.11 (a), produces a binary image. The second approach, based on the transformation shown in Fig 3.11 (b), brightens the desired range of gray levels but preserves gray levels unchanged. Fig 3.11 (c) shows a gray scale image, and fig 3.11 (d) shows the result of using the transformation in Fig 3.11 (a).

(iii) Bit-plane Slicing Pixels are digital numbers, each one composed of bits. Instead of highlighting gray-level range, we could highlight the contribution made by each bit. This method is useful and used in image compression.

Most significant bits contain the majority of visually significant data.

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