A novel nonlinear algorithm for typhoon cloud image enhancement

A novel nonlinear gray transform method is proposed to enhance the contrast of a typhoon cloud image. Generally, the typhoon cloud image obtained by a satellite cannot be directly used to make an accurate prediction of the typhoon’s center or intensity because the contrast of the received typhoon cloud image may be bad. Our aim is to extrude the typhoon’s eye in the typhoon cloud image. A normalized arc-tangent transformation operation is designed to enhance global contrast of the typhoon cloud image. Differential evolution algorithm is used to choose the optimal nonlinear transform parameter. Finally, geodesic activity contour model is used to extract the typhoon’s eye to verify the performance of the proposed method. Experimental results show that the proposed method can efficiently enhance the global contrast of the typhoon cloud image while greatly extruding the typhoon’s eye.