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A novel scheme for infrared image enhancement by using weighted least squares filter and fuzzy plateau histogram equalization

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Abstract

High-quality thermal infrared (IR) images are always preferred in numerous real-world applications. However, acquired IR images, which have low contrast and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) among other characteristics, have inferior quality because of various factors. To improve the quality of IR images, three main aspects must be addressed: global contrast, local contrast, and noise of IR images. Most of the existing methods focus only on some of these issues. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme to solve the three issues. First, an edge-preserving filter called weighted least squares filter is adopted to decompose an IR image into a low-frequency (LF) component and a sequence of high-frequency (HF) components. We propose a fuzzy plateau histogram equalization for the LF component to improve global contrast. A strategy is exploited to alter the coefficients of the HF components to enhance local contrast. The primitive result is synthesized with the enhanced LF and HF components. To suppress the noise in the primitive result, nonlocal means filter is applied to derive the final result. Numerous experiments are conducted. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme exhibits the best performance compared with the other methods.

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Acknowledgments

The research is sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61271330, No. 61473198), also is supported by the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higer Education Institutions (PAPD) Fund, Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center on Atmospheric Environment and Equipment Technology (CICAEET) Fund.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Electronics and Information Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, 610064, People’s Republic of China

    Wei Wu, Xiaomin Yang, Hong Li & Lihua Jian

  2. College of Electrical and Engineering Information, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, 610064, People’s Republic of China

    Kai Liu

  3. Jiangsu Engineering Center of Network Monitoring and School of Computer and Software, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, People’s Republic of China

    Zhili Zhou

  4. College of Electronics and information, Sichuan University, No.24, Chengdu, 610065, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaomin Yang

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  1. Wei Wu
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  2. Xiaomin Yang
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  3. Hong Li
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  4. Kai Liu
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  5. Lihua Jian
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  6. Zhili Zhou
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Correspondence to Xiaomin Yang.

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Wu, W., Yang, X., Li, H. et al. A novel scheme for infrared image enhancement by using weighted least squares filter and fuzzy plateau histogram equalization. Multimed Tools Appl 76, 24789–24817 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-017-4643-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-017-4643-8

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