Image enhancement via lateral inhibition: An analysis under illumination changes

Image enhancement is a fundamental issue in digital image processing. Image enhancement via lateral inhibition is a relatively new method inspired by the phenomenon that the optic nerves in illuminatingly light regions inhibit those in darkness. However, it is common that the observed images incorporate illumination noises. This potentially limits the utilization of an image enhancement method because amplifying the noises would make the situation even worse. In this study, performance of lateral inhibition to handle illumination changes is investigated through theoretical analyses and simulations on a few transportation cases. Specifically, uniform, linearly varying and stochastic illumination changes are considered. Experimental results confirm that lateral inhibition can enhance the original image without amplifying the illumination noises in the aforementioned three scenarios.