Homomorphic enhancement of infrared images using the additive wavelet transform

Abstract

This paper presents a new enhancement technique for infrared images. This technique combines the benefits of homomorphic image processing and the additive wavelet transform. The idea behind this technique is based on decomposing the image into subbands in an additive fashion using the additive wavelet transform. This transform gives the image as an addition of subbands of the same resolution. The homomorphic processing is performed on each subband, separately. It is known that the homomorphic processing on images is performed in the log domain which transforms the image into illumination and reflectance components. Enhancement of the reflectance reinforces details in the image. So, applying this process in each subband enhances the details of the image in each subband. Finally, an inverse additive wavelet transform is performed on the homomorphic enhanced subbands to get an infrared image with better visual details.