A Novel Evolutionary Approach to Image Enhancement Filter Design: Method and Applications

Image enhancement is an important issue in digital image processing. Various approaches have been developed to solve image enhancement problems, but most of them require deep expert knowledge to design appropriate image filters. To automatically design a filter, we propose a novel approach based on the genetic algorithm that optimizes a set of standard filters by determining their types and order. Moreover, the proposed method is able to manage various types of noise factors. We applied the proposed method to local and global image enhancement problems such as impulsive noise reduction, interpolation, and orientation enhancement. In terms of subjective and objective evaluations, the results show the superiority of the proposed method.