Nonuniformity correction of single infrared images based on deep filter neural network

Abstract

The fixed-pattern noise (FPN) caused by nonuniform optoelectronic response limits the sensitivity of an infrared imaging system and severely reduces the image quality. Therefore, nonuniform correction of infrared images is very important. In this paper, we propose a deep filter neural network to solve the problems of network underfitting and complex training with convolutional neural network (CNN) applications in nonuniform correction. Our work is mainly based on the idea of deep learning, where the nonuniform image noise features are fully learned from a large number of simulated training images. The network is designed by introducing the filter and the subtraction structure. The background interference of the image is removed by the filter, so the learning model is gathered in the nonuniform noise. The subtraction structure is used to further reduce the input-to-output mapping range, which effectively simplifies the training process. The results from the test on infrared images shows that our algorithm is superior to the state-of-the-art algorithm in visual effects and quantitative measurements, providing a new method for deep learning in nonuniformity correction of single images.