IMAGE ENHANCEMENT

Image Enhancement - Objectives

To process an image so that the result is more suitable than

the original image for a specific application.

Accentuation or sharpening of image features such as edges,

boundaries, or contrast to make an image more useful for
display and analysis.

When images are processed to improve their appearance to

human viewers, the objective may be to improve perceptual
aspects, such as image quality, intelligibility, or visual
appearance. In other applications, such as object
identification by a machine, an image may be preprocessed to
aid machine performance.

Types Of Processing

The processing techniques are very much problem

oriented. Means an image enhancement algorithm that
performs well for one class of images may not
perform well for other classes.
There are several enhancement techniques available,
and we can classify them into two broad categories.

Spatial domain methods Direct manipulations of pixels in

an image.
Frequency domain methods Modifying the fourier
transform of an image.

Spatial domain Methods

The spatial domain refers to the image plane itself, that is

the collection of pixels constituting an image.
The spatial domain process can be denoted as

g ( x, y ) T f ( x, y )

f(x,y) - input image; g(x,y) - processed image;

T operator on f, defined over some neighbourhood of
f(x,y)
The neighbourhood about point (x,y) is a square or
rectangular sub image area centered at (x,y).

Spatial domain Methods Cont..

The simplest form of T is when the neighbourhood is of size

1x1, that is a single pixel.
Then g depends only on the value of f, at (x,y) or the gray
level f(x,y), and T becomes a gray level transformation
function of the form

s = T(r). s gray level of g(x,y)

r gray level of f(x,y) at any point (x,y)

This type of processing is known as point processing,

because the processing depends only on the gray level at that
point.
When T operates on the neighbourhood of f(x,y), the
processing is done by the use of masks (say a 3x3 2-D array)
and is known as mask processing. The mask coefficients
determine the nature of process.

Basic Gray level Transformations

Three basic types of functions used for gray

level transformations in image enhancement
are

Linear.
Logarithmic.
Power low.

Linear Transformations

Identity Transformation:

Linear Transformations Cont..

Negative Transformation:
The negative of a digital image with gray levels in the range
[0,L-1] is obtained by the transformation function
s = T(r) = L-1-r = 255-r, for an 8-bit image

Digital Negative

Digital negatives are useful in the display of medical images and their
processing

Example

(a) Original digital mammogram.

(b) Negative image.

Logarithmic Transformations

The general form of a log transformation is given by

s = c log (1+r)
The transformation maps a narrow range of low gray level
values in the input image to a wider range of output levels.
The higher gray level values are compressed to a narrow
range.
Useful for enhancing details in the darker regions of the
image at the expense of detail in the brighter regions
If the dynamic range of an image data is very large (eg.
Dynamic range of a transformed image), only a few pixels
will be visible. The transformation compresses the dynamic
range.

Exponential
The effect is the reverse of that obtained with logarithmic
mapping.

Exponential Contrast Enhancement Example

Power Law Transformations

The power law transformations have the basic form given by

s cr

Power law curves with fractional values of map a narrow

range of dark input values into a wider range of output values,
with the opposite being true for higher values of input levels.
A family of transformation curves are possible for different
values of . The curves generated with values of >1 have the
opposite effect as those generated with values of <1.

Power Law Transformation - Application

A variety of devices used for image capture, printing

and display respond according to power law.
The exponent in the power law equation is referred
to as gamma and the process used to correct this
power law response phenomenon is gamma
correction.
CRT devices have a intensity to voltage response
that is a power function with gamma varying from
1.8 to 2.5.

Gamma correction - Example

Contrast Stretching

Low contrast images can result from poor illumination, lack

of dynamic range in the imaging sensor or wrong setting of a
lens aperture during image acquisition.

Contrast Stretching Cont..

A typical contrast stretching transformation is given, which

can be expressed as
0 l a1
1l

g (l ) 2 (l a1 ) 1a1
a1 l a2
(l a ) ( (a a ) a ) a l 255
2
2
2
1
1 1
2
3

The slope of the transformation is chosen greater than

unity in the region of stretch.
The idea is to increase the dynamic range of the gray levels
in the image being processed.

i > 1 - Range Stretching

i< 1 - Range Compression

Contrast Stretching Cont..

Let T(a1) = s1 and T(a2) = s2

If a1 = s1 and a2 = s2 linear transformation with
no changes in the gray levels.
If a1=a2 and s1 = 0; s2 = L-1 thresholding
function which creates a binary image.
Any intermediate values of (a1,s1) and (a2,s2)
produce various degrees of spreads in the gray
levels of the output image, which affects its
contrast.

Thresholding Function

Thresholding - Example

Gray Level Slicing

Highlighting a specific range of gray levels

in an image.

Result of Curve 1

Result of Curve with linear variation

from b to L

Result of Curve 2

Result of Curve 3

Result of Curve 4

Bit Plane Slicing

Highlighting the contributions made to total

image appearance by specific bits.
An 8-bit image contains 8 bit planes.
We can analyze the relative importance of
each bit plane an image.

Bit Plane Slicing - Example