Temporal image stacking for noise reduction and dynamic range improvement

Kalin Atanassov; James Nash; Sergio Goma; Vikas Ramachandra; Hasib Siddiqui

doi:10.1117/12.2008559

7 March 2013 Temporal image stacking for noise reduction and dynamic range improvement

Kalin Atanassov, James Nash, Sergio Goma, Vikas Ramachandra, Hasib Siddiqui

Proceedings Volume 8667, Multimedia Content and Mobile Devices; 86671P (2013) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2008559
Event: IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging, 2013, Burlingame, California, United States

Abstract

The dynamic range of an imager is determined by the ratio of the pixel well capacity to the noise floor. As the scene dynamic range becomes larger than the imager dynamic range, the choices are to saturate some parts of the scene or “bury” others in noise. In this paper we propose an algorithm that produces high dynamic range images by “stacking” sequentially captured frames which reduces the noise and creates additional bits. The frame stacking is done by frame alignment subject to a projective transform and temporal anisotropic diffusion. The noise sources contributing to the noise floor are the sensor heat noise, the quantization noise, and the sensor fixed pattern noise. We demonstrate that by stacking images the quantization and heat noise are reduced and the decrease is limited only by the fixed pattern noise. As the noise is reduced, the resulting cleaner image enables the use of adaptive tone mapping algorithms which render HDR images in an 8-bit container without significant noise increase.

Citation Download Citation

Kalin Atanassov, James Nash, Sergio Goma, Vikas Ramachandra, and Hasib Siddiqui "Temporal image stacking for noise reduction and dynamic range improvement", Proc. SPIE 8667, Multimedia Content and Mobile Devices, 86671P (7 March 2013); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2008559

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