Search

Conventionally, high dynamic-range (HDR) imaging is based on taking two or more pictures of the same scene with different exposure. However, due to a high-speed relative motion between the camera and the scene, it is hard for this technique to be applied to push-broom remote sensing cameras. For the sake of HDR imaging in push-broom remote sensing applications, the present paper proposes an innovative method which can generate HDR images without redundant image sensors or optical components. Specifically, this paper adopts an area array CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) with the digital domain time-delay-integration (DTDI) technology for imaging, instead of adopting more than one row of image sensors, thereby taking more than one picture with different exposure. And then a new HDR image by fusing two original images with a simple algorithm can be achieved. By conducting the experiment, the dynamic range (DR) of the image increases by 26.02 dB. The proposed method is proved to be effective and has potential in other imaging applications where there is a relative motion between the cameras and scenes.

The digital time delay integration (digital TDI) technology of the complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensor has been widely adopted and developed in the optical remote sensing field. However, the details of targets that have low illumination or low contrast in scenarios of high contrast are often drowned out because of the superposition of multi-stage images in digital domain multiplies the read noise and the dark noise, thus limiting the imaging dynamic range. Through an in-depth analysis of the information transfer model of digital TDI, this paper attempts to explore effective ways to overcome this issue. Based on the evaluation and analysis of multi-stage images, the entropy-maximized adaptive histogram equalization (EMAHE) algorithm is proposed to improve the ability of images to express the details of dark or low-contrast targets. Furthermore, in this paper, an image fusion method is utilized based on gradient pyramid decomposition and entropy weighting of different TDI stage images, which can improve the detection ability of the digital TDI CMOS for complex scenes with high contrast, and obtain images that are suitable for recognition by the human eye. The experimental results show that the proposed methods can effectively improve the high-dynamic-range imaging (HDRI) capability of the digital TDI CMOS. The obtained images have greater entropy and average gradients.

Autofocus methods are conventionally based on capturing the same scene from a series of positions of the focal plane. As a result, it has been difficult to apply this technique to scanning remote sensing cameras where the scenes change continuously. In order to realize autofocus in scanning remote sensing cameras, a novel autofocus method is investigated in this paper. Instead of introducing additional mechanisms or optics, the overlapped pixels of the adjacent CCD sensors on the focal plane are employed. Two images, corresponding to the same scene on the ground, can be captured at different times. Further, one step of focusing is done during the time interval, so that the two images can be obtained at different focal plane positions. Subsequently, the direction of the next step of focusing is calculated based on the two images. The analysis shows that the method investigated operates without restriction of the time consumption of the algorithm and realizes a total projection for general focus measures and algorithms from digital still cameras to scanning remote sensing cameras. The experiment results show that the proposed method is applicable to the entire focus measure family, and the error ratio is, on average, no more than 0.2% and drops to 0% by reliability improvement, which is lower than that of prevalent approaches (12%). The proposed method is demonstrated to be effective and has potential in other scanning imaging applications.

It is difficult to deal with the auto-focus of aerial push-broom remote sensing camera (APRC) based on image processing. First of all, this paper recommended the Splicing structure of CCD in the APRC Based on this, auto-focus method which is made use of the overlapping area of CCD mosaic structure was proposed, combined with the characteristic of the imaging mode. After analyzing of experiments about all kinds of focus-examine functions based on image processing, the gradient square function has been chosen. The experimental results show that the proposed auto-focus method for the APRC is proved to be feasible and real-time.

The volume of raw image data captured by the high resolution camera is extremely huge. Thus the efficient image compression method should be used to decrease the bit rate. The image compression method based on wavelet is used more widely nowadays. However, two dimensional wavelet is only the tensor product of the one dimensional wavelet whose support region of basis function is extended from interval to square. Contourlet is an image multiscale geometric analysis tool, which could represent image sparsely and has strong capability of nonlinear approximation. The basis function of contourlet is multi-directional and anisotropic. Nevertheless, contourlet is redundant. So the non-redundant Wavelet Based Contourlet Transform (WBCT) is used in this paper. The SPIHT algorithm is very efficient way to coding the significant coefficients. And the improved no lists SPIHT is more easy to implemented by hardware. Image compression method based on the combination of both wavelet based contourlet transform and no lists SPIHT coding is proposed in the paper. Experiment shows that compared to wavelet based scheme the contourlet scheme can reserve the texture of the image. For barbara test image when coding at low bit rate the PSNR can improve about 0.2dB.