Image Enhancement Methods for Remote Sensing: A Survey

The quality of the images obtained from remote sensing devices is very important for many image processing applications. Most of the enhancement methods are based on histogram modification and transform based methods. Histogram modification based methods aim to modify the histogram of the input image to obtain a more uniform distribution. Transform based methods apply a certain transform to the input image and enhance the image in transform domain followed by the inverse transform. In this work, both histogram modification and transform domain methods have been considered, as well as hybrid methods. Moreover, a new hybrid algorithm is proposed for remote sensing image enhancement. Visual comparisons as well as quantitative comparisons have been carried out for different enhancement methods. For objective comparison quality metrics, namely Contrast Gain, Enhancement Measurement, Discrete Entropy and Average Mean Brightness Error have been used. The comparisons show that, the histogram modification methods have a better contrast improvement, while transform domain methods have a better performance in edge enhancement and color preservation. Moreover, hybrid methods which combine the two former approaches have higher potential.