A Multiresolution Approach to Image Enhancement Via Histogram Shaping and Adaptive Wiener Filtering

摘要

It is critical in military applications to be able to extract features in imagery that may be of interest to the viewer at any time of the day or night. Infrared (IR) imagery is ideally suited for producing these types of images. However, even under the best of circumstances, the traditional approach of applying a global automatic gain control (AGC) to the digital image may not provide the user with local area details that may be of interest. Processing the imagery locally can enhance additional features and characteristics in the image which provide the viewer with an improved understanding of the scene being observed. This paper describes a multi-resolution pyramid approach for decomposing an image, enhancing its contrast by remapping the histograms to desired pdfs, filtering them and recombining them to create an output image with much more visible detail than the input image. The technique improves the local area image contrast in light and dark areas providing the warfighter with significantly improved situational awareness.