Enhancement of three-dimensional image visualization under photon-starved conditions

Abstract

In this paper, we propose enhancement of three-dimensional (3D) image visualization under photon-starved conditions using preprocessing such as contrast-limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE) and histogram matching. In conventional imaging techniques, photon-counting integral imaging can be utilized for 3D visualization. However, due to a lack of photons, it is challenging to enhance the visual quality of 3D images under severely photon-starved conditions. To improve the visual quality and accuracy of 3D images under these conditions, in this paper, we apply CLAHE and histogram matching to a scene before photon-counting integral imaging is used. To prove the feasibility of our proposed method, we implement the optical experiment and show the performance metric such as peak sidelobe ratio.