Image enhancement and
sharpening
Procedures of image processing
Preprocessing
Radiometric correction is concerned with improving the accuracy of surface spectral
reflectance, emittance, or back-scattered measurements obtained using a remote sensing
system. Detector error correction, Atmospheric and topographic corrections
Geometric correction is concerned with placing the above measurements or
derivativeproducts in their proper locations.
Information enhancement
Point operations change the value of each individual pixel independent of all other
pixels
Local operations change the value of individual pixels in the context of the values of
neighboring pixels.
Information enhancement includes image reduction, image magnification, transect
extraction, contrast adjustments (linear and non-linear), band ratioing, spatial filtering,
fourier transformations, principle components analysis, texture transformations, and
image sharpening
Information extraction
Post-classification
Information output
Image or enhanced image itself, thematic map, vector map, spatail database, summary
statistics and graphs
1. Image reduction
2x reduction
1. Sampling every other row or column
2. Pixel aggregate (average of 4 pixels)
or Nearest Neighbor in ENVI
2. Image magnification
2x magnification
1. Duplicate every row and colume 2. Bilinear resampling 3. Cubic resampling
or Nearest Neighbor in ENVI
3. Transects
(spatial profiles)
4. Spectral profiles
5. Contrast Enhancement (stretch)
Materials or objects reflect or emit similar amounts of radiant flux (so similar
pixel value)
Low-contrast imagery with pixel range less than the designed radiometric
range
20-100 for TM less than the designed 0-255
To improve the contrast:
Linear technique
Minimum-maximum contrast stretch
Percentage linear contrast stretch
Standard deviation contrast stretch
Piecewise linear contrast stretch
Non-linear technique
Histogram equalization
Contrast enhancement is only intended to improve the visual quality of a
displayed image by increasing the range (spreading or stretching) of data
values to occupy the available image display range (usually 0-255). It does
not change the pixel values, unless save it as a new image. It is not good
practice to use saved image for classification and change detection.
Minimum-maximum contrast stretch
BVin min k
BVout quantk
max k min k
where:
- BVin is the original input brightness value
- quantk is the range of the brightness values that can be
displayed on the CRT (e.g., 255),
- mink is the minimum value in the image,
- maxk is the maximum value in the image, and
- BVout is the output brightness value
Percentage linear and standard
deviation contrast stretch
X percentage (say 5%) top or low values of the image will be
set to 0 or 255, rest of values will be linearly stretched to 0 to
255
ENVI has a default of a 2% linear stretch applied to each
image band, meaning the bottom and top 2% of image values
are excluded by positioning the range bars at the appropriate
points. Low 2% and top 2% will be saturated to 0 and 255,
respectively. The values between the range bars are then
stretched linearly between 0 and 255 resulting in a new image.
If the percentage coincides with a standard deviation
percentage, then it is called a standard deviation contrast
stretch. For a normal distribution, 68%, 95.4%, 99.73% values
lie in 1, 2 , 3 . So 16% linear contrast stretch is the
1 contrast stretch.
original Saturating the water Saturating the land
Stretching the land Stretching the water
Special linear contrast stretch
Or Stretch on demand
Piecewise linear contrast stretch
When the histogram of an image is not Gaussian
(bimodal, trimodal, …), it is possible to apply a
piecewise linear contrast stretch.
But you better to know what each mode in the
histogram represents in the real world.
Stretch both
land and water
Nonlinear contrast stretch:
histogram equalization
It automatically reduces the contrast in the
very light or dark parts of the image
associated with the tails of a normally
distributed histogram.
Some pixels that originally have differently
values are now assigned the same value
(perhaps loss information), while other value
that were once very close together are now
spread out, increasing the contrast between
them
Scan the p272 and 274
Histogram equalized
Original