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Thermal Infrared Image Enhancement Method Based on Retinex  

Lee, Won-Seok (School of Electrical Engineering, Dongyang Mirae University)
Kim, Kyoung-Hee (School of Electrical Engineering, Dongyang Mirae University)
Lee, Sang-Won (Department of Electronic Engineering, Kwangwoon University)
Publication Information
전자공학회논문지 IE / v.48, no.2, 2011 , pp. 32-39 More about this Journal
Abstract
The output image of the uncooled thermal infrared camera is difficult the identification of target because of the limited dynamic range and the various noises. Retinex algorithm based on the theory of the human visual perception is known to be effective contrast enhancement technique. However, the image quality is insufficient when it is adopted to the narrow dynamic range image as the infrared image. In this paper, we propose the revised retinex algorithm to enhance the contrast of the infrared image. To improve the contrast enhancement performance, we designed the new dynamic range compression function instead of log function. To reduce the noise and compensate the loss of edge, we added the contrast compensation procedure in the MSR image generation process. According to the output picture comparing and numerical analysis, the proposed algorithm shows the better contrast enhancement performance and the more suitable method for the infrared image enhancement.
Keywords
image processing; thermal infrared; dynamic range; contrast; retinex;
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