UNIT III IMAGE ENHANCEMENT AND RESTORATION Spatial domain enhancement: gray level transformations - histogram modification and

Specification techniques- Image averaging- Directional Smoothing- Median- Geometric MeanHarmonic mean- Contra harmonic and Yp mean filters- Homomorphic filtering- Color image enhancement. Image Restoration degradation model- Unconstrained and Constrained restoration- Inverse filtering: Removal of blur caused by uniform linear Motion- Wiener filtering- Geometric transformations: spatial transformations- Gray-Level interpolation. INTRODUCTION The aim of image enhancement is to improve the interpretability or perception of information in images (image quality) for human viewers, or to provide `better' input for other automated image processing techniques. Image enhancement techniques can be divided into two broad categories: 1. Spatial domain methods, which operate directly on pixels, and 2. Frequency domain methods, which operate on the Fourier transform of an image. SPATIAL DOMAIN METHODS  Spatial domain processes will be denoted by the expression g(x, y) = T [ f(x, y) ] Where f(x, y) is the input image, g(x, y) is the processed image, T is an operator on f, defined over some neighborhood of (x, y).

TYPES OF PROCESSING 1. Point processing 2. Neighborhood Processing 3. Transforms Gray values change without any knowledge of its surroundings. Gray values change depending on the gray values in a small neighborhood of pixels around the given pixel. Gray values are represented in a different domain, but equivalent form, e.g. Fourier, wavelet

POINT PROCESSING
 When the neighborhood is of size l x l, g depends only on the value of f at (x, y), and T becomes a gray-level (also called an intensity or mapping) transformation function of the form s = T(r)  Where, r and s are variables denoting, respectively, the gray level of f(x, y) and g(x, y) at any point (x, y).  Using this technique, we can achieve some interesting effects like contrast-stretching and bi-level mapping.  Point processing methods are based only on the intensity of single pixels.  Contrast Stretching:  A simple method of image enhancement using point processing  Produce higher contrast than the original by : a. Darkening the levels below m in the original image. b. Brightening the levels above m in the original image.

NEIGHBORHOOD PROCESSING
 A neighborhood about (x, y) is defined by using a square (or rectangular) sub-image area centered at (x, y).  Mask is small 2-D array of pixels. It is also called as kernel or template or window or filter.  Neighborhood is bigger than 1x1 pixel and so it is of m x m pixel.

 The general approach is that the value of g (x, y) determined by the values of in a predefined neighborhood (i.e. the mask/filter) of (x, y)
is f ( x;.

FREQUENCY DOMAIN METHODS  Let g ( x , y ) be a desired image formed by the convolution of an image f ( x, y ) and a linear, position invariant operator h( x, y ) , that is:
g ( x , y ) ! h ( x, y )  f ( x, y )

GRAY LEVEL TRANSFORMATIONS There are three basic types of functions (transformations) that are used frequently in image enhancement. They are: a. b. c. d. Linear Transformations: Image negatives, Identity Log Transformations: log , inverse log Power Law Transformations: nth power, nth root Piecewise-Linear Transformation Functions: Contrast stretching Gray-level slicing Bit-plane slicing

Image Negation:
 The negative of an image with gray levels in the range [0,L-1] is obtained by using the negative transformation given as:     Image negatives are used mainly in medical images and to produce slides of the screen  Suited for enhancing white or gray detail embedded in dark regions of an image, especially when the black areas are dominant in size.  Equivalent of a photographic negative.

Log Transformations
 General form given by: s = c log (1 + r), c is a constant, r 0

 Log curve maps a narrow range of low gray-level values in the input image into a wider range of output levels.  It compresses the dynamic range of images with large variations in pixel values.  This transform is used to expand values of dark pixels and compress values of bright pixels.  Example of image with dynamic range: Fourier spectrum image.

Power-Law Transformations
 General form given by: C and are positive constants.  Different devices respond differently to pixel values according to power law.  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.  Identity function : c= =1

Gamma correction  It is a process used to correct power-law transformation.  Typical values of for CRTs are between 1.8 and 2.5.  Gamma correction is done by preprocessing the image before inputting it to the monitor with s = cr1/

 Gamma-correction is important if displaying the image accurately on a computer screen is of concern.  Images not properly corrected can look bleached out or too dark.  When the is reduced too much, the image begins to reduce contrast to the point where the image started to have very slight washout look, especially in the background.

Example of CRT gamma correction

PIECEWISE-LINEAR TRANSFORMATION  Advantage: piecewise functions can be arbitrarily complex; For practical implementation the transformations can be formulated only as piecewise functions.  Disadvantage: is that their specification requires considerably more user input. Contrast stretching  This technique can enhance low-contrast images.  The idea is to increase the dynamic range of the gray-levels by using a piecewise linear curve.  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.

Compression of dynamic range  When the dynamic range of a processed image cant be fully displayed, a way to compress the dynamic range of the pixel values is available s = c log (1 + r) with a scaling constant.  The desired compression is performed by the logarithmic function.  Example: when a Fourier spectrum is scaled linearly for displaying on an 8-bit system.
c

Gray-level slicing
 Highlighting a specific range of gray levels in an image.  Two basic themes: a. Display a high value for all gray levels in the range of interest and a low value for all other gray levels; produces a binary image. b. Brightens (or, darkens) the desired range of gray levels but preserves the background and gray-level tonalities in the image.

Bit-plane slicing
 When the intensity of each pixel of an image is defined by 8 bits, we may highlight some specific intensity by considering only those pixels in the image.  This contribution made to total image appearance by specific bits.  This technique results in a decomposition of an image into several bit-planes that each contribute to the total image.  The lowest order bits dont give visually significant extra data. (image compression can thus be done using this technique).  Higher-order bits contain the majority of the visually significant data.  Useful for analyzing the relative importance played by each bit of the image.

Example: An 8-bit fractal image

 The (binary) image for bit-plane 7 can be obtained by processing the input image with a Thresholding gray-level transformation. a. Map all levels between 0 and 127 to 0 b. Map all levels between 129 and 255 to1.

SPATIAL DOMAIN METHODS a. b. c. d. e. Grey scale manipulation Histogram Equalization Image Smoothing Image sharpening High boost filtering

FREQUENCY DOMAIN METHODS a. Homomorphic filtering