Spatial Filtering -
Enhancement
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References
1. Gonzalez and Woods, “ Digital Image
Processing,” 2nd Edition, Prentice Hall,
2002.
2. Jain, “Fundamentals of Digital Image
Processing,” Prentice Hall 1989
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Filters – Powerful Imaging Tool
• Frequency domain is often used
– Enhancement by accentuating the features of
interest
• Spatial domain
– Linear
– Think of this as weighted average over a
mask / filter region
– Compare to convolution – imaging
(smoothing) filters are often symmetric
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Spatial Filtering Computations
Result for 3x3 mask
g(x,y) = w(-1,-1)f(x-1,y-1) + w(-1,0)f(x-1,y)
+ w(-1,1) f(x-1,y+1)
…….
+ w(1,1)f(x+1,y+1)
Result for mxn mask
g(x,y) =
a b
∑ ∑ w(s,t) f(x+s,y+t)
s=-a t=-b
a = (m-1)/2 b = (n-1)/2
If image size is MxN, then x=0,1,…M-1 and
y=0,1,..N-1.
From [1]
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Smoothing Filters
• Weighted average
• Low pass filter
• Reduce the noise; remove small artifacts
• Blurring of edges
• Two masks: Note multiplication is by 2n,
divide once at end of process
g(x,y) =
a b a b
∑ ∑ w(s,t) f(x+s,y+t) / ∑ ∑ w(s,t)
s= -a t= -b s= -a t= -b
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Smoothing - Examples
Suppressed small
objects in the
scene
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Median Filter
• Example of Order Statistics Filter.
– Other examples – max filter or min filter
• Effective for impulse noise (salt and pepper noise)
• Median – half the values <= the median value
– NxN neighborhood, where N is odd
– Replace center of mask with the median value
– Stray values are eliminated; uniform neighborhoods not affected
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Sharpening Filters
• Smoothing Blurring “Averaging”
• Sharpening is the reverse process
– Smoothing is the result of integration
– Sharpening involves differentiation
• Enhances discontinuities
– Noise
– Edges
• De-emphasizes uniform parts of the image
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Differentiation – Numeric Techniques
• Derivatives are defined in terms of differences
– First – order derivative
f ' (x) = (f (x) – f (x - Δ)) / Δ
– Second – order derivative
f '' (x) = (f ' (x+Δ) – f ' (x)) / Δ
=({f (x + Δ) – f (x)} – {f (x) – f (x - Δ)}) / Δ2
=({f (x + Δ) – 2f (x) – f (x - Δ)}) / Δ2
Δ = smallest unit; for images Δ = 1.
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Example of Derivative Computation
Isolated point
(noise?)
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Use Derivatives with care
• What is the gradient?
• Slope at a local point, may be quite different than the
overall trend
• Often use a smoothing filter to reduce impact of noise
• Higher the order of the derivative, higher is the impact of
local discontinuities
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Laplacian for Enhancement
• Second order derivatives are better at highlighting finer details
• Imaging requires derivatives in 2D
• Laplacian 2 f = fxx + fyy , where
• fxx = f(x+1,y) + f(x-1,y) – 2 f(x,y)
• fyy= f(x,y+1) + f(x, y-1) – 2 f(x,y)
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Composite Laplacian for Enhancement
• Laplacian highlights
discontinuities (b and c)
• The “uniform” regions are
suppressed
• To restore the balance, for
image enhancement the
original image is added to
the Laplacian
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Application of Composite Masks
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The Gradient
The gradient measures how fast pixel intensity changes in an image
and in which direction.
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Sobel Gradient-Based Masks
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Sobel Mask – Detects Edges
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Multiple Step Spatial Enhancement
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