Remote Sensing- Benefits of Retinex Image Processing
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While the numerical analysis of remote sensing images is a major research discipline, the visual image occupies a pivotal role in both scientific and comercial uses of remote sensing imagery. There is a strong need to produce images with excellent visual quality. Further the less sophisticated the user of remote sensing data, the more exclusive will be the reliance upon visual interpretation of airborne and spaceborne images.
Our extensive experience with the retinex image processing in remote sensing applications can be summarized as:
- 1. The dynamic range compression aspect of retinex processing provides a major visual improvement in scenes with wide reflectance ranges, typically- scenes with snow, scenes with clouds, and coastal scenes. These types of scenes represent a large percentage of remote sensing images acquired.
- 2. The color constancy aspect of retinex processing provides a major visual improvement in "blue-shifted" images which occur frequently when the intervening atmosphere has high humidity levels.
- 3. While shadows and other lighting variations are much less common than for terrestrial imaging, they do occur in remote sensing. Significant shadows occur in mountainous terrain and in high resolution urban scenes. These more limited applications are however still potentially important to some users.
Other remote sensing scenes not falling into the above three categories also generally benefit from retinex enhancements though with a more modest improvement in overall sharpness and contrast.
Retinex image processing fulfils the need to "see everything" in one picture.
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