Color image enhancement based on perceptual sharpening

In this paper we present a sharpening operator for color images that is based on perceptual considerations about how human visual behaves for color scenes. Color contrast is an induction phenomenon of the visual system that varies the chromaticity of a color region depending on the color of its surround, provoking an enhanced perception of color scenes. This effect can be simulated by a sharpening operator based on a Laplacian of Gaussian filtering combined with an interpolation process. This operator presents interesting properties to remove noise in regions of similar color, to enhance edges without destroying region structures and not prevent the creation of false color edges.