FPGA implementation of a real-time biologically inspired image enhancement algorithm

This paper presents an FPGA implementation of a novel image enhancement algorithm, which compensates for the under-/over-exposed image regions, caused by the limited dynamic range of contemporary standard dynamic range image sensors. The algorithm, which is motivated by the attributes of the shunting center-surround cells of the human visual system, is implemented in Altera Stratix II GX: EP2SGX130GF1508C5 FPGA device. The proposed implementation, which is synthesized in an FPGA technology, employs reconfigurable pipeline, structured memory management, and data reuse in spatial operations, to render in real-time the huge amount of input data that the video signal comprises. It also avoids the use of computationally intensive operations, achieving the required specifications in terms of flexibility, timing, performance and visual quality. The proposed implementation allows real-time processing of color images with sizes up to 2.5 Mpixels, at frame rate of 25 fps. As a result, the architectural solution described in this work offers a low-cost implementation for automatic exposure correction in real-time video systems.

Segment dependent dynamic multi-histogram equalization for image contrast enhancement

Histogram equalization (HE) method proved to be a simple and most effective technique for contrast enhancement of digital images. However it does not preserve the brightness and natural appearance of the images, which is a major drawback. To overcome this limitation, several Bi- and Multi-HE methods have been proposed. Although the Bi-HE methods significantly enhance the contrast and may preserve the brightness, the natural appearance of the images is not preserved as these methods suffer with the problem of intensity saturation. While Multi-HE methods are proposed to further maintain the brightness and natural appearance of images, but at the cost of contrast enhancement. In this paper, two novel Multi-HE methods for contrast enhancement of natural images, while preserving the brightness and natural appearance of the images, have been proposed. The technique involves decomposing the histogram of an input image into multiple segments based on mean or median values as thresholds. The narrow range segments are identified and are allocated full dynamic range before applying HE to each segment independently. Finally the combined equalized histogram is normalized to avoid the saturation of intensities and un-even distribution of bins. Simulation results show that, for the variety of test images (120 images) the proposed method enhances contrast while preserving brightness and natural appearance and outperforms contemporary methods both qualitatively and quantitatively. The statistical consistency of results has also been verified through ANOVA statistical tool.     

Underwater image enhancement by maximum-likelihood based adaptive color correction and robust scattering removal

Underwater images often exhibit severe color deviations and degraded visibility, which limits many practical applications in ocean engineering. Although extensive research has been conducted into underwater image enhancement, little of which demonstrates the significant robustness and generalization for diverse real-world underwater scenes. In this paper, we propose an adaptive color correction algorithm based on the maximum likelihood estimation of Gaussian parameters, which effectively removes color casts of a variety of underwater images. A novel algorithm using weighted combination of gradient maps in HSV color space and absolute difference of intensity for accurate background light estimation is proposed, which circumvents the influence of white or bright regions that challenges existing physical model-based methods. To enhance contrast of resultant images, a piece-wise affine transform is applied to the transmission map estimated via background light differential. Finally, with the estimated background light and transmission map, the scene radiance is recovered by addressing an inverse problem of image formation model. Extensive experiments reveal that our results are characterized by natural appearance and genuine color, and our method achieves competitive performance with the state-of-the-art methods in terms of objective evaluation metrics, which further validates the better robustness and higher generalization ability of our enhancement model.     

基于同态滤波的水下图像增强与色彩校正模型

水体对于不同波长的光信号衰减程度不一致,这种现象破坏了水下图像的清晰度和色彩恒定性。为了解决水下图像亮度与色彩扭曲问题,提出一种基于同态滤波的水下图像增强与色彩校正模型。首先,通过比尔-朗伯定律和路径辐射分量构建出水下成像模型。其次,通过同态滤波对未经过衰减的水下图像进行估计。最后,通过麦克劳林级数对水下成像模型进行级数展开,进而推导出一种保持颜色恒定的水下图像色彩校正模型。实验部分分别对比了水下图像的主观视觉效果和客观评价指标,验证了该算法能够有效地保证水下图像的清晰度和色彩恒定性。校正后的水下图像细节丰富,色彩逼真。     

Algorithmic and architectural design for real-time and power-efficient Retinex image/video processing

This paper presents novel algorithmic and architectural solutions for real-time and power-efficient enhancement of images and video sequences. A programmable class of Retinex-like filters, based on the separation of the illumination and reflectance components, is proposed. The dynamic range of the input image is controlled by applying a suitable non-linear function to the illumination, while the details are enhanced by processing the reflectance. An innovative spatially recursive rational filter is used to estimate the illumination. Moreover, to improve the visual quality results of two-branch Retinex operators when applied to videos, a novel three-branch technique is proposed which exploits both spatial and temporal filtering. Real-time implementation is obtained by designing an Application Specific Instruction-set Processor (ASIP). Optimizations are addressed at algorithmic and architectural levels. The former involves arithmetic accuracy definition and linearization of non-linear operators; the latter includes customized instruction set, dedicated memory structure, adapted pipeline, bypasses, custom address generator, and special looping structures. The ASIP is synthesized in standard-cells CMOS technology and its performances are compared to known Digital signal processor (DSP) implementations of real-time Retinex filters. As a result of the comparison, the proposed algorithmic/architectural design outperforms state-of-art Retinex-like operators achieving the best trade-off between power consumption, flexibility, and visual quality.

沙尘图像色彩恢复及增强卷积神经网络

目的 在沙尘天气条件下,由于大气中悬浮微粒对入射光线的吸收和散射,户外计算机视觉系统所采集图像通常存在颜色偏黄失真和低对比度等问题,严重影响户外计算机视觉系统的性能。为此,提出一种带色彩恢复的沙尘图像卷积神经网络增强方法,由一个色彩恢复子网和一个去尘增强子网组成。方法 采用提出的色彩恢复子网(sand dust color correction, SDCC)校正沙尘图像的偏色,将颜色校正后的图像作为条件,输入到由自适应实例归一化残差块组成的去尘增强子网中,对沙尘图像进行增强处理。本文还提出一种基于物理光学模型的沙尘图像合成方法,并采用该方法构建了大规模的配对沙尘图像数据集。结果 对大量沙尘图像的实验结果表明,所提出的沙尘图像增强方法能很好地去除图像中的偏色和沙尘,获得正常的视觉颜色和细节清晰的图像。进一步的对比实验表明,该方法能取得优于对比方法的增强图像。结论 本文所提出的沙尘图像增强方法能很好地消除整体的黄色色调和尘霾现象,获得正常的视觉色彩和细节清晰的图像。     

ASIP-based reconfigurable architectures for power-efficient and real-time image/video processing

To meet both flexibility and performance requirements, particularly when implementing high-end real-time image/video processing algorithms, the paper proposes to combine the application specific instruction-set processor (ASIP) paradigm with the reconfigurable hardware one. As case studies, the design of partially reconfigurable ASIP (r-ASIP) architectures is presented for two classes of algorithms with widespread diffusion in image/video processing: motion estimation and retinex filtering. Design optimizations are addressed at both algorithmic and architectural levels. Special processor concepts used to trade-off performance versus flexibility and to enable new features of post-fabrication configurability are shown. Silicon implementation results are compared to known ASIC, DSP or reconfigurable designs; the proposed r-ASIPs stand for their better performance–flexibility figures in the respective algorithmic class.

Parallel algorithms for image enhancement and segmentation by region growing, with an experimental study

This paper presents efficient and portable implementations of a powerful image enhancement process, the Symmetric Neighborhood Filter (SNF), and an image segmentation technique that makes use of the SNF and a variant of the conventional connected components algorithm which we call -Connected Components. We use efficient techniques for distributing and coalescing data as well as efficient combinations of task and data parallelism. The image segmentation algorithm makes use of an efficient connected components algorithm based on a novel approach for parallel merging. The algorithms have been coded in Split-C and run on a variety of platforms, including the Thinking Machines CM-5, IBM SP-1 and SP-2, Cray Research T3D, Meiko Scientific CS-2, Intel Paragon, and workstation clusters. Our experimental results are consistent with the theoretical analysis (and provide the best known execution times for segmentation, even when compared with machine-specific implementations). Our test data include difficult images from the Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) satellite data.Also affiliated with the Department of Electrical Engineering.Also affiliated with the Department of Computer Science and the Center for Automation Research.     

A rank ordered filter for medical image edge enhancement and detection using intuitionistic fuzzy set

This paper gives a novel scheme using intuitionistic fuzzy set theory to enhance the edges of medical images. Medical images contain lots of uncertainties, as they are poorly illuminated and fuzzy/vague in nature. So, direct segmentation techniques will not produce better results. There are lots of researches on edge enhancement starting from non-fuzzy to fuzzy set, but proper enhancement (highlighting important structures) is not obtained. Enhancement of edges helps in recovering the important structures that are not visible properly. Even minute pathological blood vessels/cells are not visible properly and in that case edge enhancement will enhance these blood vessels/cells. Intuitionistic fuzzy set theory is found suitable in medical image processing as it considers more (two) uncertainties as compared to fuzzy set theory. In the processing phase, image is initially converted to intuitionistic fuzzy image and intuitionistic fuzzy entropy is used to obtain the optimum value of the parameter in the membership and non-membership functions. Then it computes the total variation of the pixels with respect to the median value of the image window (rank order filtering). This enhances the borders or the edges of the image. The resulting image is then segmented (edge detected) using standard Canny's edge detector, when simply using Canny's edge detector does not give better result. From the result it is observed that on comparing with non-fuzzy and fuzzy methods, the proposed method gives better information about the images, which is helpful to the pathologists in accurate diagnosing of diseases.