• 전자공학회논문지 IE
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.57-65
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• 2009

This paper presents the image contrast enhancement technique suitable for local dimming backlight of small-sized mobile display while achieving the reduction of the power consumption. In addition to the large-sized TFT-LCD, small-sized one has adopted LED for backlight. Since, conventionally, LED was mounted on the side edge of a display panel, global dimming method has been widely used. However, recently, new advanced method of local dimming by placing the LED to the backside of the display panel and it raised the necessity of sub-blocked processing after partitioning the target image. When the sub-blocked image has low brightness, the supply current of a backlight LED is reduced, which gives both enhancement of contrast ratio and power consumption reduction. In this paper, we propose simple and improved image enhancement algorithm suitable for the small-sized mobile display. After partitioning the input image by equal sized blocks and analyzing the pixel information in each block, we realize the primary contrast enhancement by independently processing the sub-blocks using the information such as histogram, mean, and standard deviation values of luminance(Y) component. And then resulting information is transferred to each backlight control unit for local dimming to realize the secondary contrast enhancement as well as reduction of power consumption.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.11 no.12
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• pp.5998-6016
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• 2017

In thin-film transistor liquid-crystal displays (TFT-LCDs), which are most commonly used in mobile devices, the backlight accounts for about 70% of the power consumption. Therefore, most low-power-related studies focus on realizing power savings through backlight dimming. Image compensation is performed to mitigate the visual distortion caused by the backlight dimming. Therefore, popular techniques include pixel compensation for brightness recovery and contrast enhancement, such as histogram equalization. However, existing pixel compensation techniques often have limitations with respect to blur owing to the pixel saturation phenomenon, or because contrast enhancement cannot adequately satisfy the human visual system (HVS). To overcome these, in this study, we propose a novel dimming technique to achieve both power saving and HVS-awareness by combining the pixel compensation and histogram specifications, which convert the original cumulative density function (CDF) by designing and using the desired CDF of an image. Because the process of obtaining the desired CDF is customized to consider image characteristics, histogram specification is found to achieve better HVS-awareness than histogram equalization. For the experiments, we employ the LIVE image database, and we use the structural similarity (SSIM) index to measure the degree of visual satisfaction. The experimental results show that the proposed technique achieves up to 15.9% increase in the SSIM index compared with existing dimming techniques that use pixel compensation and histogram equalization in the case of the same low-power ratio. Further, the results indicate that it achieves improved HVS-awareness and increased power saving concurrently compared with previous techniques.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.32-40
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• 2022

Underwater optical images face various limitations that degrade the image quality compared with optical images taken in our atmosphere. Attenuation according to the wavelength of light and reflection by very small floating objects cause low contrast, blurry clarity, and color degradation in underwater images. We constructed an image data of the Korean sea and enhanced it by learning the characteristics of underwater images using the deep learning techniques of CycleGAN (cycle-consistent adversarial network), UGAN (underwater GAN), FUnIE-GAN (fast underwater image enhancement GAN). In addition, the underwater optical image was enhanced using the image processing technique of Image Fusion. For a quantitative performance comparison, UIQM (underwater image quality measure), which evaluates the performance of the enhancement in terms of colorfulness, sharpness, and contrast, and UCIQE (underwater color image quality evaluation), which evaluates the performance in terms of chroma, luminance, and saturation were calculated. For 100 underwater images taken in Korean seas, the average UIQMs of CycleGAN, UGAN, and FUnIE-GAN were 3.91, 3.42, and 2.66, respectively, and the average UCIQEs were measured to be 29.9, 26.77, and 22.88, respectively. The average UIQM and UCIQE of Image Fusion were 3.63 and 23.59, respectively. CycleGAN and UGAN qualitatively and quantitatively improved the image quality in various underwater environments, and FUnIE-GAN had performance differences depending on the underwater environment. Image Fusion showed good performance in terms of color correction and sharpness enhancement. It is expected that this method can be used for monitoring underwater works and the autonomous operation of unmanned vehicles by improving the visibility of underwater situations more accurately.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2004.10a
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• pp.237-240
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• 2004

In this study, the digital image processing with image enhancement based on homomorphic filtering was performed using geophysical imaging data such as gravity, magnetic data and sub-scenes of satellite images such as LANDSAT, IKONOS, and KOMPSAT. Windows application program for executing homomorphic filtering was designed and newly implemented. In general, homomorphic filtering is technique that is based on Fourier transform, which enhances the contrast of image by removing the low frequencies and amplifying the high frequencies in frequency domain. We can enhance the image selectively using homomorphic filtering as compared with the existing method, which enhance the image totally. Through several experiment using remotely sensed imagery and geophysical image with this program, it is concluded that homomorphic filtering is more effective to reveal distinct characteristics for some complicated and multi-associated features on image data.

• Journal of the Optical Society of Korea
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.152-162
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• 2010

This study examined the effects of surround luminance on the shape of the spatial luminance contrast sensitivity function (CSF). The reduction in brightness of uniform neutral patches shown on a computer controlled display screen is also assessed to explain the change of CSF shape. Consequently, a large amount of reduction in contrast sensitivity at middle spatial frequencies can be observed; however, the reduction is relatively small for low spatial frequencies. In general, the effect of surround luminance on the CSF appears similar to that of mean luminance. Reduced CSF responses result in less power of the filtered image; therefore, the stimulus should appear dimmer with a higher surround luminance.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
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• 2013.11a
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• pp.8-11
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• 2013

We implement the foveation and frequency sensitivity feature of human visual system in discrete cosine transform (DCT) domain. Resolution of human visual perception decays as distance from the eye-focused point, known as foveation property, and the middle frequency components give most pleasant image quality to human than the low and high frequency components, which is the frequency sensitivity property of human visual system. For satisfying the foveation property, we enhanced the local contrast at the focused regions and smoothed local contrast at the non-focused regions in the DCT domain without bringing the blocking and ringing artifacts. Moreover, the energies at each DCT frequency components is modified with various degree to fulfill the frequency sensitivity property. The proposed method is verified by the subjective and objective evaluations that it can the improve the human perceptual visual quality.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.87-93
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• 2014

In this paper, we propose a block-based low-power complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor (CIS) with a simple pixel structure for power efficiency. This method, which uses an additional computation circuit, makes it possible to reduce the power consumption of the pixel array. In addition, the computation circuit for a block-based CIS is very flexible for various types of pixel structures. The proposed CIS was designed and fabricated using a standard CMOS 0.18 ${\mu}m$ process, and the performance of the fabricated chip was evaluated. From a resultant image, the proposed block-based CIS can calculate a differing contrast in the block and control the operating voltage of the unit blocks. Finally, we confirmed that the power consumption in the proposed CIS with a simple pixel structure can be reduced.

• Journal of Korea Society of Industrial Information Systems
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.1-13
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• 2017

In This Paper, we find the Target Candidate Region and the Location of the Candidate Region by Performing the Morphological Difference Calculation and Pixel Labeling for Robust Small Target Detection in Infrared Image with low SNR. Conventional Target Detection Methods based on Morphology Algorithms are low in Detection Accuracy due to their Vulnerability to Clutter in Infrared Images. To Address the Problem, Target Signal Enhancement and Background Clutter Suppression are Achieved Simultaneously by Combining Moravec Algorithm and LCM (Local Contrast Measure) Algorithm to Classify the Target and Noise in the Candidate Region. In Addition, the Proposed Algorithm can Efficiently Detect Multiple Targets by Solving the Problem of Limited Detection of a Single Target in the Target Detection method using the Morphology Operation and the Gaussian Distance Function Which were Developed for Real time Target Detection.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.52-59
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• 2009

In general, methods based on histogram or a correction of gamma curve are usually utilized to enhance the contrast of captured image in the dark scene. These methods are efficient to enhance the contrast globally, however, they locally induced the low quality of image. Recently, to resolve the problem, the multi-scaled refiner algorithm improving the contrast with locally averaged lightness is proposed. However, estimating the locally averaged lightness, if there is the object with a high saturated color, the color distortion might be induced by the color of object. Thus, in this paper, the dominant chromaticity of image is estimated to correct the locally averaged lightness in multi-scaled retinex algorithm. Because the average chromaticity of image includes the chromaticity of illumination, the dominant chromaticity is estimated with dividing the average chromaticity of image by the estimated chromaticity of illumination from highlight region. In addition, to improve the lower chroma by multi-scaled retinex algorithm generally, the chroma was compensated preserving the hue in the CIELAB color space.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.658-665
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• 2015

In the production of medical images, noise reduction and contrast enhancement are important methods to increase qualities of processing results. By using the edge-based denoising and adaptive nonlinear histogram stretching, a novel medical image enhancement algorithm is proposed. First, a medical image is decomposed by wavelet transform, and then all high frequency sub-images are decomposed by Haar transform. At the same time, edge detection with Sobel operator is performed. Second, noises in all high frequency sub-images are reduced by edge-based soft-threshold method. Third, high frequency coefficients are further enhanced by adaptive weight values in different sub-images. Finally, an adaptive nonlinear histogram stretching method is applied to increase the contrast of resultant image. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can enhance a low contrast medical image while preserving edges effectively without blurring the details.