Adaptive enhancement method of infrared image based on scene feature

All objects emit radiation in amounts related to their temperature and their ability to emit radiation. The infrared image shows the invisible infrared radiation emitted directly. Because of the advantages, the technology of infrared imaging is applied to many kinds of fields. But compared with visible image, the disadvantages of infrared image are obvious. The characteristics of low luminance, low contrast and the inconspicuous difference target and background are the main disadvantages of infrared image. The aim of infrared image enhancement is to improve the interpretability or perception of information in infrared image for human viewers, or to provide 'better' input for other automated image processing techniques. Most of the adaptive algorithm for image enhancement is mainly based on the gray-scale distribution of infrared image, and is not associated with the actual image scene of the features. So the pertinence of infrared image enhancement is not strong, and the infrared image is not conducive to the application of infrared surveillance. In this paper we have developed a scene feature-based algorithm to enhance the contrast of infrared image adaptively. At first, after analyzing the scene feature of different infrared image, we have chosen the feasible parameters to describe the infrared image. In the second place, we have constructed the new histogram distributing base on the chosen parameters by using Gaussian function. In the last place, the infrared image is enhanced by constructing a new form of histogram. Experimental results show that the algorithm has better performance than other methods mentioned in this paper for infrared scene images.

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