Research on visualization method of high dynamic range infrared image based on M-CLAHE

The analog signal output by the infrared detector is usually sampled as a 14-bit high-dynamic-range digital infrared image, which is not compatible with most 8-bit display systems and cannot be directly used for imaging display. Therefore, image compression quality is very important for image display .This paper studies and analyzes the mapping technology of the base layer, focusing on the traditional limited contrast histogram equalization method (CLAHE). Considering that the conventional CLAHE method is applied to infrared images, there will be a problem of excessive stretching of some uniform areas. a new algorithm for Contrasted Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization based on uniform region test (M-CLAHE) is proposed. Based on the traditional CLAHE method, this method introduces a gradient operator to extract the contour boundary of the sub-region image, and quantifies the complexity of the image region to solve the above problems. The experimental results show that compared with the traditional CLAHE infrared image compression method, this method can more than double the visual indicators such as image contrast and average gradient compared with the traditional visualization method. This method has engineering portability, and it can be transplanted to the infrared movement to increase the image quality of most scenes by about twice.