Novel algorithm of detail enhancement for IR image
Wei De-yi · Laser & Infrared · 2012
Infrared images are usually digitized to 14 bits(or 16 bits).The images often contain much noise and have low contrast,so they need to be enhanced before further processing.The common enhancement methods are usually carried out after the IR images have been compressed from 14 bit to 8 bit,which results in detail information lost.We here propose a new algorithm,by which the enhancement process is carried out along with the compressing procedure.The algorithm combines the bilateral filtering with the contrast strengthening by improved extreme value normalization.Firstly,we split the detail part from the basic part of the image,saving and enhancing the detail part while compressing the dynamic range of the basic part.Then we use the improved extreme normalization method to enhance the image contrast and get the enhanced 8 bit image data which can be displayed on normal monitor.The experiment results show that this method can make good compression while preserve the detail image information.