Modern imaging systems -- including CCD cameras, and various types of thermal imagers -- are capable of producing images in which useful information covers a signal range which is too great for current display technology to present to the human observer. Additionally, conventional display of electro-optical imagery severely biases the range of small signal differences that are observable by a viewer, despite the partial compensation provided by the approximately quadratic response of cathode ray tube monitors. This paper proposes the use of dynamic range zooming -- analogous to spatial resolution zooming -- as an efficient technique to support visual search of high dynamic range imagery, with the zooming being perceptually unbiased. The technique can be implemented as a lookup table in the signal processing chain of an imaging system. The effect of quantization in the output of the look up table is considered, as such quantization may be a problem for implementation.

Date Published: 8 September 1995
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 2552, Infrared Technology XXI, (8 September 1995); doi: 10.1117/12.218258

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2552:
Infrared Technology XXI
Bjorn F. Andresen; Marija Strojnik, Editor(s)