ALGORITHMS FOR IMAGE ENHANCEMENT

INTROUDUCTION
 IMAGE RESTORATION

IMAGE restoration refers to the genre of techniques that aim to recover a high-quality original image
from a degraded version of that image given a specific model for the degradation process. This is in
contrast to image enhancement techniques that seek to improve the appearance of an image without
reference to a specific model for the degradation process. The restoration framework is particularly
valuable because in conjunction with a training-based approach, it provides a context within which the
free parameters of the restoration algorithm may be optimized. Training-based approaches have been
used to develop imaging algorithms for a variety of applications, including image interpolation, image
restoration, digital half toning, de-screening, and color correction. The ingredients that training-based
approaches have in common when used for development of imaging algorithms are: 1) a set of
training pairs each consisting of an input image and a desired output image, 2) an architecture for the
algorithm consisting of free parameters, and 3) a cost function under which those free parameters may
be optimized. In many cases, the architecture contains a classifier that allows for parameter
optimization separately within different pixel classes according to the value of an appropriately
chosen feature vector.

FORMS OF DEGRADATION

The two most common forms of degrading an image suffers a loss of sharpness or blur, and
noise. The degradation model we use consists of a linear, shift-invariant blur followed by additive
noise. The problem we are interested in is twofold. First we seek to develop a sharpening method that
is fundamentally different from the unsharp mask filter (USM), which sharpens an image by
enhancing the high-frequency components of the image. In the spatial domain, the boosted high-
frequency components lead to overshoot and undershoot around edges, which causes objectionable
ringing or halo artifacts. Our goal is to develop a sharpening algorithm that increases the slope of
edges without producing overshoot and undershoot, which renders clean, crisp, and artifact-free
edges, thereby improving the overall appearance of the image. The second aspect of the problem we
wish to address is noise removal. We want to present a unified solution to both sharpness
enhancement and noise removal. In most applications, the degraded image contains both noise and
blur. A sharpening algorithm that works well only for noise-free images will not be applicable in these
situations.
In terms of noise removal, conventional linear filters work well for removing additive
Gaussian noise, but they also significantly blur the edge structures of an image. Therefore, a great deal
of research has been done on edge-preserving noise reduction. One of the major endeavors in this area
has been to utilize rank order information. Due to a lack of the sense of spatial ordering, rank order
filters generally do not retain the frequency selective properties of the linear filters and do not
suppress Gaussian noise optimally. Hybrid schemes combining both rank order filtering and linear
filtering have been proposed in order to take advantage of both approaches. These nonlinear rank
order approaches in general improve the edge sharpness, but they are more complex to implement
than a spatial linear filter.
Different technique’s are developed for enhancement operations.and the paper concerns with different
algorithms for that.

 UNSHARP MASKING

 Resolution might add detail, but it can't add sharpness, they're different things. Resolution
adds the detail that lets us recognize features. Sharpness makes edges clear and distinct. The
standard tool of choice for sharpening is the UnSharp Mask filter (called USM).   It's magic!  
Most good programs have a USM. Scanners often include a USM tool, but normally the USM
sharpening is done after the scan, as the final operation in an image program that saves the
image file.

 Sharpening filters emphasize the edges in the image, or the differences between adjacent light
and dark sample points in an image. The generic Sharpen or Sharpen More filters are often for
graphics, and are less suitable for color photographic images. However, filters do vary, the
name "Sharpen" is vague and is not always very descriptive, it is hard to say what they do.
But the UnSharp Mask is where the action is for photographs, the standard tool. It offers the
necessary greater control.

Image with less contrast Image after Unsharp Mask added

 High pass filter gives great result but there is one problem,it gets rid of the complete
background .When we need to enhance the edges but also need to retain some of the
background we use modified version of high pass filter known as Unsharp Masking-
USM(HIGH BOOST FILTERING)
 In High Boost filtering we pass some of the background along with the high
frequency content
  High pass = Original – Low pass. To pass some of the background multiply original
image with multiplicative factor A.

This gives us high boost filtering.

 High Boost = (A) Original - Low pass
If A >1, some of the original signal is added back to high pass result. This process restores
some of the background in to high passed image. This technique is known as Unsharp
masking.

 Bilateral Filtering for Gray and Color Images

 In the broadest sense of the term “filtering,” the value of the filtered image at a given
location is a function of the values of the input image in a small neighborhood of the
same location. Inparticular,Gaussian low-passfiltering computes aweighted average of
pixel values in the neighborhood, in which, the weights decrease with distance from
the neighborhood center.
 Although formal and quantitative explanations of this weight fall-off can be given. the
intuitionis that images typically vary slowly over space, so near pixels are likely to
have similar values, and it is therefore appropriate to average them together. The
noise values that corrupt these nearby pixels are mutually less correlated than the
signal values, so noise is averaged away while signal is preserved. In this paper, we
propose a noniterative scheme for edge preserving smoothing that is noniterative and
simple. Although we claims no correlation with neurophysiological observations, we
point out that our scheme could be implemented by a single layer of neuron-like
devices that perform their operation once per image.
 The idea underlying bilateral filtering is to do in the range of an image what
traditional filters do in its domain. Two pixels can be close to one another, that is,
occupy nearby spatial location, or they can be similar to one another, that is, have
nearby values, possibly in a perceptually meaningful fashion. Closeness refers to
vicinity in the domain, similarity to vicinity in the range. Traditional filtering is
domain filtering, and enforces closeness by weighing pixel values with coefficients
that fall off with distance.Similarly, we define range filtering, which averages image
values with weights that decay with dissimilarity. Range
filters are nonlinear because their weights depend on image intensity or color.
 Spatial locality is still an essential notion. In fact, we show that range filtering by
itselfmerely distorts an image’s colour map. We then combine range and domain
filtering, and show that the combination is much more interesting.
We denote the combined filtering as bilateral filtering.

 The shift-variant filtering operation of the bilateral filter is given by

Where f^[m,n] is the restored image, h[m,n,k,l] is the response at [m,n]to an impulse at [k,l] ,
and g[m,n] is the degraded image. For the bilateral filter shown at where [mo,no] is
the center pixel of the window,.Ωmo,no={[m,n]}:[m,n] Ɛ [mo-N,mo+N] X [noN,no+N],σd
and σr are the standard deviations of the domain and range Gaussian filters, respectively, and
is a normalization factor that assures that the filter preserves average gray value in constant
areas of the image.
 * =

Illustration of how the bilateral filter works. (a) Blurred and noisy 165_156 image “edge.tif”;
(b) bilateral filter restored image (c) Gaussian filter restored image

 ADAPTIVE BILATERAL FILTER (ABF) FOR IMAGE

SHARPENING AND DE-NOISING
• Adaptive bilateral filter is a powerful alternative to the iteration-based (WLS,RE,AD)
filters for noise removal, it also treats for treating piece-wise linear signals.
• The bilateral filter uses a m by n filter support, and exploits every possible pixel in
this neighborhood in order to average the noise.
• The ABF outperforms the bilateral filter in noise removal. At the same time, it
renders much sharper images than the bilateral filter does.
• Adaptive bilateral filter is trouble-free to enjoy the good de-noising performance
while reducing complexity. As a result, the overall quality of the restored image is
significantly improved.

In this section, we present a new sharpening and smoothing algorithm: the adaptive bilateral
filter (ABF). The response at [mo,no] of the proposed shift-variant ABF to an impulse
at[m,n] is given.where [mo,no]and Ωmo,no are defined as before, and the normalization
factor relation with impulse is given by
 • Some modifications：
1 an offset ξ is introduced to the range filter
2 both ξ and σr are locally adaptive
3 σd=1 be fixed
Role of in the ABF
The range filter can be interpreted as a 1-D filter that processes the histogram of the image.
We index the images in the table by their [row, column] coordinates. The original degraded i
For the conventional bilateral filter, the range filter is located on the histogram at the gray
value of the current pixel and rolls off as the pixel values fall farther away from the center
pixel value, By
adding an offset to the range filter, we are now able to shift the range filter on the histogram,
As before,let Ωmo,no denote the set of pixels(2N+1)X(2N+1) in the window of pixels
centered at(mo,no).let MIN,MAX,and MEAN denote the operations minimum, maximum,
and average value of the data in , Ωmo,no respectively.
let

We will demonstrate the effect of bilateral filtering with a fixed domain Gaussian filter and a
range filter.

A range filter shifted by the following choice for ξ.

• ξ is the key to slope restoration.

• The output is bounded between MIN(Ωm0,n0) and MAX(Ω m0,n0).
• To smooth：shift RF towards MEAN (Ωm0,n0) use a large σr
• To sharpen：shift RF away from the midpoint use a small σr
The adaptive bilateral filter output compared with other 2 methods.and it’s the improved one
with good noise removing and sharpness enhancing operation.

CONCLUSION
In this paper, we presented three image enhancement algorithms starts with unsharp masking,
and ends with bilateral filterand adaptive bilateral filter (ABF).The USM which sharpens an
image by enhancing the high-frequency components of the image. In the spatial domain,the
boosted high-frequency components lead to overshoot and undershoot around edges, which
causes objectionable ringing or halo artifacts . Bilateral filtering smoothes image while
preserving edges by means of a nonlinear combination of nearby image values. it’s a non
iterative.so needs lot of computations. The ABF is able to smooth the noise, while enhancing
edges and textures in the image. The parameters of the ABF are optimized with a training procedure.
ABF restored images are significantly sharper than those restored by the bilateral filter. Compared
with an USM based sharpening method—the optimal unsharp mask , ABF restored edges are as
sharp as those rendered by the OUM, but without the halo artifacts that appear in the OUM
restored image. In terms of noise removal, ABF also outperforms the bilateral filter and the OUM.
We demonstrate that ABF works well for both natural images and text images.

REFERANCES
 Adaptive Bilateral Filter for Sharpness Enhancement and Noise Removal
Buyue Zhang, Member, IEEE, and Jan P. Allebach, Fellow, IEEE
 Image Enhancement Techniques Pixel Operation in Spatial DomainKirti Rajadnya
and. K.T. Talele
 Bilateral Filtering for Gray and Color ImagesC. Tomasi _ R. Manduchi