ENHANCEMENT OF MULTISPECTRAL THERMAL INFRARED IMAGES - DECORRELATION CONTRAST STRETCHING

Decorrelation contrast stretching is an effective method for displaying information from multispectral thermal infrared (TIR) images. The technique involves transformation of the data to principle components ("decorrelation"), independent contrast "stretching" of data from the new "decorrelated" image bands, and retransformation of the stretched data back to the approximate original axes, based on the inverse of the principle component rotation. The enhancement is robust in that colors of the same scene components are similar in enhanced images of similar scenes, or the same scene imaged at different times. Decorrelation contrast stretching is reviewed in the context of other enhancements applied to TIR images.