A real-time infrared image enhancement algorithm based on improved CLAHE

Abstract

Due to that the infrared thermal imaging system has the characteristics of low contrast and small dynamic range, this paper proposed an real-time infrared image enhancement algorithm based on Limit Contrast Adaptive Histogram Equalization (CLAHE) and also provided the algorithm implementation. The algorithm firstly divides the pretreated image data into several sub-regions of size, and then the histogram of the sub-region is calculated respectively, the clipping threshold of histogram is determined according to the image gradient information, the captured pixels are evenly distributed to each gray level. Finally, bi-linear interpolation is used to remove the unbalance effect of block edge transition. Experimental results show that compared with traditional algorithms, this algorithm is capable of suppressing the noise and highlight the edges and details of the image, as well as meeting the real-time requirement.