The hardware design of real-time infrared image enhancement system

Low contrast and shortage of gray levels are two main characteristics of infrared image and the real-time image enhancement technology is the key to ameliorate infrared imaging system performance and improve image quality. In this paper, the basic principle of a new histogram-transforming algorithm is described in detail and the special gray-level transforming function is presented. This paper proposes flexible hardware circuit architecture to realize the real-time infrared image processing based on DSP+FPGA techniques. The experiment results show that this method has good real-time characters and the image brightness contrast as well as the recognizing capability of human eyes can be increased significantly. In the infrared image television system, this method can be used directly and has high commercial value. Moreover, this hardware and associate programmable environment is suitable for other signal processing occasions.