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LCE/7.5.1/RC 01
TEACHING NOTES
Department: ELECTRONICS & COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING
Unit: III Date:
Topic name: Image Enhancement Point Processing No. of marks allotted by JNTUK
JNTUK:
Books referred:: 01. Digital Image Processing by R C Gonzalez and R E Woods
02. www.wikipedia.org
03. www.google.com
Image Enhancement:
The aim of image enhancement is to improve the interpretability or perception of
information in images for human viewers, or to provide ‘better’ input for other automated image
processing techniques.
Image enhancement techniques can be divided into two broad categories:
1. Spatial domain methods, which operate directly on pixels, and
2. Frequency domain methods, s, which operate on the Fourier transform of an image.
Unfortunately, there is no general theory for determining what `good’ image enhancement
is when it comes to human perception. If it looks good, it is good! However, when image
enhancement techniques are used as pre-processing
pre processing tools for other image processing techniques,
then quantitative measures can determine which techniques are most appropriate.
Spatial Domain Methods:
The value of a pixel with coordinates (x, y) in the enhanced image F is the res result of
performing some operation on the pixels in the neighborhood of (x, y) in the input image, F.
Neighborhoods can be any shape, but usually they are rectangular.
Grey scale manipulation:
The simplest form of operation is when the operator T acts only on a 1×1 pixel neighborhood
in the input image that is F (x, y) depends on the value of F only at (x, y). This is a grey scale
transformation or mapping.
The simplest case is threshold where the intensity profile is replaced by a step function,
active at a chosen threshold value. In this case any pixel with a grey level below the threshold in the
input image gets mapped to 0 in the output image. Other pixels are mapped to 255.
Other grey scalee transformations are outlined in figure
figure-1 below.

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LCE/7.5.1/RC 01
TEACHING NOTES
Department: ELECTRONICS & COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING
Unit: III Date:
Topic name: Histogram Processing No. of marks allotted by JNTUK:
Books referred: 01. Digital Image Processing by R C Gonzalez and R E Woods
02. www.wikipedia.org
03. www.google.com
Histogram Processing:
Histogram equalization is a common technique for enhancing the appearance of images.
Suppose we have an image which is predominantly dark. Then its histogram would be skewed
towards the lower end of the grey scale and all the image detail is compressed into the dark end of
the histogram. If we could ‘stretch out’ the grey levels at the dark end to produce a more uniformly
distributed histogram then the image would become much cleaner.
Histogram equalization involves finding a grey scale transformation function that creates an
output image with a uniform histogram.

Q. How do we determine this grey scale transformation function?

Assume our grey levels are continuous and have been normalized to lie between 0 and 1.
We must find a transformation T that maps grey values r in the input image F to grey values s = T(r)
in the transformed image F.
It is assumed that, T is single valued & monotonically increasing, and 0 ≤ T(r) ≤ 1 for 0 ≤ r ≤ 1.
The inverse transformation from s to r is given by,
r = T-1(s).
If one takes the histogram for the input image and normalizes it so that the area under the
histogram is 1, we have a probability distribution for grey levels in the input image Pr(r).

Q. If we transform the input image to get s = T(r) what is the probability distribution Ps(s)?
From probability theory it turns out that
Ps(S) = Pr(r)[dr/ds’]
Where, r = T-1(s).
Consider the transformation,

s = T(r) = ∫Pr(ω)dω

This is the cumulative distribution function of r. using this definition of T we see that the
derivative of s with respect to r is
ds/dr = Pr(r)
Substituting this back into the expression for Ps, we get
Ps(S) = Pr(r)[1/Pr(r)] = 1

for all s, where 0 ≤ s ≤ 1. Thus, Ps(s) is now a uniform distribution function, which is what we
want.

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LCE/7.5.1/RC 01
TEACHING NOTES
Department: ELECTRONICS & COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING
Unit: III Date:
Topic name: Spatial Filtering - 1 No. of marks allotted by JNTUK:
Books referred: 01. Digital Image Processing by R C Gonzalez and R E Woods
02. www.wikipedia.org
03. www.google.com
Spatial Filtering:
A spatial filter is an optical device which uses the principles of Fourier optics to alter the
structure of a beam of coherent light or other electromagnetic radiation. Spatial filtering is
commonly used to clean up the output of lasers, removing aberrations in the beam due to imperfect,
dirty, or damaged optics, or due to variations in the laser gain medium itself. This can be used to
produce a laser beam containing only a single transverse mode of the laser’s optical resonator.
In spatial filtering, a lens is used to focus the beam. Because of diffraction, a beam that is not
a perfect plane wave will not focus to a single spot, but rather will produce a pattern of light and
dark regions in the focal plane. For example, an imperfect beam might form a bright spot
surrounded by a series of concentric rings. It can be shown as follows:

It can be shown that this 2D pattern is the 2DFT of the initial beam’s transverse intensity
distribution. In this context, the focal plane is often called the transform plane. Light in the very
center of the transform pattern corresponds to a perfect, wide plane wave. Other light corresponds
to structure in the beam, with light further from the central spot corresponding to structure with
higher spatial frequency. A pattern with very fine details will produce light very far from the
transform plane’s central spot. In the example above, the large central spot and rings of light
surrounding it are due to the structure resulting when the beam passed through a circular aperture.
The spot is enlarged because the beam is limited by the aperture to a finite size, and the rings relate
to passed through a circular aperture. The spot is enlarged because the beam is limited by the
aperture to a finite size, and the rings relate to the sharp edges of the beam created by the edges of
the aperture. This pattern is called an Airy pattern, after its discoverer George Airy.
In practice, the diameter of the aperture is chosen based on the focal length of the lens, the
diameter and quality of the input beam, and its wavelength. If the hole is too small, the beam quality
is greatly improved but the power is greatly reduced. If the hole is too large, the beam quality may
not be improved as much as desired.
The size of aperture that can be used also depends on the size and quality of the optics. To
use a very small pinhole, one must use a focusing lens with a low f-number, and ideally the lens
should not add significant aberrations to the beam. The design of such a lens becomes increasingly
more difficult as the f-number decreases.

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LCE/7.5.1/RC 01
TEACHING NOTES
Department: ELECTRONICS & COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING
Unit: III Date:
Topic name: Spatial Filtering - 2 No. of marks allotted by JNTUK:
Books referred: 01. Digital Image Processing by R C Gonzalez and R E Woods
02. www.wikipedia.org
03. www.google.com
In practice, the most commonly used configuration is to use a microscope objective lens for
focusing the beam, and an aperture made by punching a small, precise, hole in a piece of thick metal
foil. Such assemblies are available commercially.

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