Real-time processing of image restoration for space camera

To enhance the imaging performance for a space camera, a real-time image restoration method was proposed based on the efficient extraction of Point Spread Function (PSF). The key issues of real-time image restoration were analyzed based on typical image restoration methods. A deconvolution operator was given by combining the PSF with the typical image restoration methods. Then, the real-time recovery processing was carried out in a spatial domain by using a Field Programming Gate Array(FPGA) as the core device. The verified experiments on the remote sensing image data from the space camera were performed on a hardware platform and the restoration results by proposed method were compared with those by typical image restoration methods. The comparative results show that the gray mean gradient of the image from one space camera with 12 000 pixel CCD chip has improved from 3.7887 to 8.2296 and the Laplacian from 15.4567 to 43.9075, which achieves the same performance as that of the typical image restoration methods. The image processing delay is 1.9 ms when the deconvolution operator size is 19 pixel×19 pixel, and the Modulation Transfer Function(MTF) is increased from 0.1 to 0.23 at the Nyqyist frequency. These data demonstrate that the imaging performance within the whole space camera system is significantly improved by the real-time image restoration system. ©, 2015, Chinese Academy of Sciences. All right reserved.