Image Processing Lecture 4
Image Enhancement
Image enhancement aims to process an image so that the output image is
“more suitable” than the original. Suitability is application-dependent,
and the success of enhancement may be evaluated subjectively by
viewers or according to defined criterion. Image enhancement either
helps solve some computer imaging problems, or is used to improve
“image quality”.
Image enhancement techniques include sharpening, smoothing,
highlighting features, or normalizing illumination for display and/or
analysis. Enhancement methods are either used as a preprocessing step to
other imaging tasks, or as post-processing to create a more visually
desirable image.
Image Enhancement Approaches
Image enhancement approaches are classified into two categories:
• Spatial domain methods: are based on direct manipulation of pixels
in an image.
• Frequency domain methods: are based on modifying the Fourier
transform of an image.
Image Enhancement in the Spatial Domain
The term spatial domain refers to the image plane itself, i.e. the total
number of pixels composing an image. Enhancing an image in the spatial
domain could be achieved by image operators that transform an image by
changing pixel values or move them around. A spatial domain process is
denoted by the expression:
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Image Processing Lecture 4
where f(x,y) is the input image, g(x, y) is the processed image, and T is an
operator on f . The operator T is applied at each location (x, y) to yield the
output, g, at that location.
For simplicity in notation, we rewrite the previous expression as follows:
where r and s are variables denoting, respectively, the gray level of f(x, y)
and g(x, y) at any point (x, y).
Enhancement using basic gray level transformations
Basic gray level transformation functions can be divided into:
• Linear: e.g. image negatives and piecewise-linear transformation
• Non-linear: e.g. logarithm and power-law transformations
Image negatives
The negative of an image with gray levels in the range [0, L-1] is
obtained by using the following expression
This type of processing is useful for enhancing white or gray detail
embedded in dark regions of an image, especially when the black areas
are dominant in size. An example of using negative transformation is
analyzing digital mammograms as shown in the figure below.
Note how much easier it is to analyze the breast tissue in the negative
image.
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(a) (b)
Figure 4.1 (a) Original digital mammogram. (b) Negative image obtained by negative
transformation
Piecewise-linear transformation
The form of piecewise linear functions can be arbitrarily complex. Some
important transformations can be formulated only as piecewise functions,
for example thresholding:
For any 0 < t < 255 the threshold transform can be defined as:
Thresholding Transform
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Figure 4.2 Form of thresholding transform
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The figure below shows an example of thresholding an image by 80.
(a) Original image (b) Result of thresholding
Figure 4.3 Thresholding by 80
Thresholding has another form used to generate binary images from the
gray-scale images, i.e.:
Thresholding Transform
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Output Gray Level, s
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0 51 102 153 204 255
Input Gray Level, r
Figure 4.4 Form of thresholding transform to produce binary images
The figure below shows a gray-scale image and its binary image resulted
from thresholding the original by 120:
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(a) (b)
Figure 4.5 Thresholding. (a) Gray-scale image. (b) Result of thresholding (a) by 120
Another more complex piecewise linear function can be defined as:
Piecewise Linear Transform
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Figure 4.6 Form of previous piecewise linear transform
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By applying this transform on the original image in Figure 4.3(a) we get
the following output image:
Figure 4.7 Result of thresholding
Piecewise linear functions are commonly used for contrast enhancement
and gray-level slicing as we will see in this lecture.
Log transformation
The general form of the log transformation is
where c is a constant, and it is assumed that . This transformation is
used to expand the values of dark pixels in an image while compressing
the higher-level values as shown in the figure below.
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Log Transform
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Figure 4.8 Form of Log transform
The figure below shows an example of applying Log transform.
(a) Original image (b) Result of Log transform
with c = 1
Figure 4.9 Applying log transformation
Note the wealth of detail visible in transformed image in comparison with
the original.
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Power-law transformation
Power-law transformations have the basic form:
where c and y are positive constants. The power y is known as gamma,
hence this transform is also called Gamma transformation. The figure
below shows the form of a power-law transform with different gamma (y)
values.
Figure 4.10 Form of power-law transform with
various gamma values (c = 1 in all cases)
Power-law transformations are useful for contrast enhancement. The next
figure shows the use of power-law transform with gamma values less
than 1 to enhance a dark image.
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(a) (b)
(c) (d)
Figure 4.11 (a) Original MRI image of a human spine. (b)-(d) Results of applying power-law
transformation with c = 1 and y = 0.6,0.4, and 0.3, respectively.
We note that, as gamma decreased from 0.6 to 0.4, more detail became
visible. A further decrease of gamma to 0.3 enhanced a little more detail
in the background, but began to reduce contrast ("washed-out" image).
The next figure shows another example of power-law transform with
gamma values greater than 1, used to enhance a bright image.
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(a) (b)
(c) (d)
Figure 4.12 (a) Original bright image. (b)-(d) Results of applying power-law transformation
with c = 1 and y = 3, 4, and 5, respectively.
We note that, suitable results were obtained with gamma values of 3.0
and 4.0. The result obtained with y = 5.0 has areas that are too dark, in
which some detail is lost.
From the two examples, we note that:
• Dark areas become brighter and very bright areas become slightly
darker.
• Faint (bright) images can be improved with y >1, and dark images
benefit from using y <1.
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Image Dynamic range, Brightness and Contrast
The dynamic range of an image is the exact subset of gray values
{0,1,…,L-1} that are present in the image. The image histogram gives a
clear indication on its dynamic range.
• When the dynamic range of an image is concentrated on the low
(dark) side of the gray scale, the image will be a dark image.
• When the dynamic range of an image is biased toward the high
side of the gray scale, the image will be a bright (light) image.
• An image with low contrast has a dynamic range that will be
narrow and will be centered toward the middle of the gray scale.
Low-contrast images tend to have a dull, washed-out gray look,
and they can result from 1) poor illumination, 2) lack of dynamic
range in the imaging sensor, or 3) wrong setting of lens aperture at
the image capturing stage.
• When the dynamic range of an image contains a significant
proportion (i.e. cover a broad range) of the gray scale, the image is
said to have a high dynamic range, and the image will have a high
contrast. In high-contrast images, the distribution of pixels is not
too far from uniform, with very few vertical lines being much
higher than the others.
The figure below illustrates a gray image shown in four basic gray-level
characteristics: dark, light, low-contrast, and high-contrast. The right side
of the figure shows the histograms corresponding to these images.
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Dark
image
Light
image
Low-
contrast
image
High-
contrast
image
Figure 4.13 Four basic image types: dark, light, low-contrast, high-contrast, and their
corresponding histograms.
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Contrast stretching
aims to increase (expand) the dynamic range of an image. It transforms
the gray levels in the range {0,1,…, L-1} by a piecewise linear function.
The figure below shows a typical transformation used for contrast
stretching.
The locations of points
(r1, s1) and (r2, s2)
control the shape of the
transformation function.
Figure 4.14 Form of transformation function
For example the following piecewise linear function
Contrast Stretching
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Figure 4.15 Plot of above piecewise linear function
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will be used to increase the contrast of the image shown in the figure
below:
(a) (b)
(c) (d)
Figure 4.16 Contrast stretching. (a) Original image. (b) Histogram of (a). (c) Result of
contrast stretching. (d) Histogram of (c).
For a given plot, we use the equation of a straight line to compute the
piecewise linear function for each line:
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For example the plot in Figure 4.15, for the input gray values in the
interval [28 to 75] we get:
Similarly, we compute the equations of the other lines.
Another form of contrast stretching is with clipping at both ends as shown
in the example below:
255
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Figure 4.17 Contrast-stretching with clipping at both ends
This transform produces a high-contrast image from the low-contrast
image shown in the next figure.
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(a) (b)
Figure 4.18 (a) Low-contrast image. (b) High-contrast image resulted from applying contrast-
stretching in Figure 4.17 on (a)
Gray-level slicing
Gray-level slicing aims to highlight a specific range [A…B] of gray
levels. It simply maps all gray levels in the chosen range to a high value.
Other gray levels are either mapped to a low value (Figure 4.19(a)) or left
unchanged (Figure 4.19(b)). Gray-level slicing is used for enhancing
features such as masses of water in satellite imagery and enhancing flaws
in X-ray images.
(a) (b)
Figure 4.19 Gray-level slicing
The next figure shows an example of gray level slicing:
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(a) Original image
(b) Operation intensifies desired gray level (c) Result of applying (b) on (a)
range, while preserving other values (background unchanged)
(d) Operation intensifies desired gray level (e) Result of applying (d) on (a) (background
range, while changing other values to black changed to black)
Figure 4.20 Example of gray level slicing
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