• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.130-139
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• 2013

This paper proposes a new approach for enhancing digital images based on red channel information, which has the most analogous characteristics to invisible infrared rays. Specifically, a red channel in RGB space is used to analyze the image contents and improve the visual quality of the input images but it can cause unexpected problems, such as the over-enhancement of reddish input images. To resolve this problem, inter-channel correlations between the color channels were derived, and the weighting parameters for visually pleasant image fusion were estimated. Applying the parameters resulted in significant brightness as well as improvement in the dark and bright regions. Furthermore, simple contrast and color corrections were used to maintain the original contrast level and color tone. The main advantages of the proposed algorithm are 1) it can improve a given image considerably with a simple inter-channel correlation, 2) it can obtain a similar effect of using an extra infrared image, and 3) it is faster than other algorithms compared without artifacts including halo effects. The experimental results showed that the proposed approach could produce better natural images than the existing enhancement algorithms. Therefore, the proposed scheme can be a useful tool for improving the image quality in consumer imaging devices, such as compact cameras.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.403-406
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• 2005

The purpose of this paper is to propose ways to remove false color noise (FCN) generated during de-mosaicing on RGB Bayer pattern images. In case of images sensors adapting Bayer pattern color filters array (CFA), de-mosaicing is conducted to recover the RGB color data in single pixels. Here, FCN phenomena would occur where there is clearer silhouette or contrast of colors. The FCN phenomena found during de-mosaicking process appears locally in the edges inside the image and the proposed method of eliminating this is to convert RGB color space to YCbCr space to conduct smoothing process. Moreover, for edges where different colors come together, censoring based smoothing technique is proposed as a way to minimize color blurring effect.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SP
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• v.43 no.6 s.312
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• pp.65-84
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• 2006

In this paper, we present an improved image formation model and propose a color image enhancement based on the model. In the presented image formation model, an input image is represented as a product of global illumination, local illumination, and reflectance. In the proposed color image enhancement, an input RGB color image is converted into an HSV color image. Under the assumption of white-light illumination, the H and S component images are remained as they are and the V component image only is enhanced based on the image formation model. The global illumination is estimated by applying a linear LPF with wide support region to the input V component image and the local illumination by applying a JND (just noticeable difference)-based nonlinear LPF with narrow support region to the processed image, where the estimated global illumination is eliminated from the input V component image. The reflectance is estimated by dividing the input V component image by the estimated global and local illuminations. After performing the gamma correction on the three estimated components, the output V component image is obtained from their product. Histogram modeling is next executed such that the final output V component image is obtained. Finally an output RGB color image is obtained from the H and S component images of the input color image and the final output V component image. Experimental results for the test image DB built with color images downloaded from NASA homepage and MPEG-7 CCD color images show that the proposed method gives output color images of very well-increased global and local contrast without halo effect and color shift.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.515-524
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• 2016

Infrared (IR) wavelength is out of visible range and thus usually cut by hot filters in general commercial cameras. However, some information from the near-IR (NIR) range is known to improve the overall visibility of scene in many cases. For example when there is fog or haze in the scene, NIR image has clearer visibility than visible image because of its stronger penetration property. In this paper, we propose an algorithm for fusing the RGB and NIR images to obtain the enhanced images of the outdoor scenes. First, we construct a weight map by comparing the contrast of the RGB and NIR images, and then fuse the two images based on the weight map. Experimental results show that the proposed method is effective in enhancing visible image and removing the haze.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.116-124
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• 2009

Recently the CPU performance of modem chipsets or multimedia processors of mobile phone is as high as notebook PC. That is why mobile phone has been emerged as a leading ICON on the convergence of consumer electronics. The various applications of mobile phone such as DMB, digital camera, video telephony and internet full browsing are servicing to consumers. To meet all the demands the image quality has been increasingly important. Mobile phone is a portable device which is widely using in both the indoor and outside environments, so it is needed to be overcome to deteriorate image quality depending on environmental light source. Furthermore touch window is popular on the mobile display panel and it makes contrast loss because of low transmittance of ITO film. This paper presents the image enhancement algorithm to be embedded on image enhancement SoC. In contrast enhancement, we propose Clipped histogram stretching method to make it adaptive with the input images, while S-shape curve and gain/offset method for the static application And CIELCh color space is used to sunlight readability enhancement by controlling the lightness and chroma components which is depended on the sensing value of light sensor. Finally the performance of proposed algorithm is evaluated by using histogram, RGB pixel distribution, entropy and dynamic range of resultant images. We expect that the proposed algorithm is suitable for image enhancement of embedded SoC system which is applicable for the small-sized mobile display.

• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2013.05a
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• pp.215-218
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• 2013

In this paper, we proposed a method for enhancement of color images with sky regions. The input image is converted into HSV space and then sky and non-sky regions are separated. For sky region, saturation enhancement is performed for each pixel based on the enhancement factor calculated from the average saturation of its local neighborhood. On the other hand, for the non-sky region, the enhancement is applied only on the luminance value (V) component of the HSV color image, which is performed in two steps. The luminance enhancement, which is also called as dynamic range compression, is carried out using nonlinear transfer function. Again, each pixel is further enhanced for the adjustment of the image contrast depending upon the center pixel and its neighborhood pixel values. At last, the original H and V component image and enhanced S component image for the sky region, and original H and S component image and enhanced V component image for the non-sky region are converted back to RGB image.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.20 no.9
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• pp.1481-1490
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• 2017

This paper presents an image quality enhancement algorithm for dark image acquired under poor lighting condition. Various retinex algorithms which are human perception-based image processing methods were proposed to solve this problem. Although MSR(Multi-Scale Retinex) among these algorithm works well under most lighting condition, it shows color degradation because their separate nonlinear processing of RGB color channels. To compensate for the loss of the color, MSRCR(Multi-Scale Retinex with Color Restoration) was proposed. However, it requires high computational load and has additional parameters that need to be adjusted according to input image. In order to overcome this problem, a new retinex algorithm based on MSR is proposed in this paper. The proposed method consists of V channel MSR, saturation correction, and separate contrast enhancement process. Experimental results show that the subjective and objective image quality of the proposed method better than those of the conventional methods.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics B
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• v.30B no.5
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• pp.103-108
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• 1993

An image can be largely corrupted by the ambient illuminant, so that the image enhancement to restory natural color without respect to the ambient illuminant is needed. It this paper, a new color image enhancement technique based on color constancy is proposed. To enhance the image quality, higher volues of contrast and saturation are preferred, but their excessive values make an image unnatural. Since the color constancy processing preserves only hue, while reducing the dynamic range of lightness and saturation,the technique is needed in order to compensate this phenomenon. The proposed method transforms and increases lightness and saturation simultaneously to avoid the complexity in the related transformation by analyzing the relationship between the RGB and modified IHS coordinate system.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.288-292
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• 2016

In this paper, we propose an infrared image based human victim recognition method for a search and rescue robot in dark environments, like general disaster situations. For recognizing a human victim, an infrared camera on a RGB-D camera, Microsoft Kinect, is used. The contrast and brightness of the infrared image are first improved by histogram equalization, and the noise on the image is removed by morphological operation and Gaussian filtering. For recognizing a human victim, the binarization and blob labeling methods are applied to the improved image. Finally, for verifying the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method, an experiment for human victim recognition is carried out in a dark environment.

• Journal of Korea Society of Digital Industry and Information Management
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.99-107
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• 2019

Retinex-based image enhancement is a technique that utilizes the property that the human visual characteristics are sensitive to the difference from the surrounding pixel value rather than the pixel value itself. These Retinex-based algorithms show different characteristics of the improved image depending on the applied color space or gamma correction. In this paper, we set eight different experimental conditions according to the application of color space and gamma correction, and analyze the objective and subjective performance of each Retinex based image enhancement algorithm and apply it to the implementation of Retinex based algorithm. In the case of gamma correction, quantitative low entropy images and low contrast images are obtained. The application of Retinex technique in HSI color space rather than RGB color space is found to be high in overall subjective image quality as well as maintaining color.