High-dynamic-range image acquisition and display by multi-intensity imagery

This study describes a method for generating an image of a scene with a wide dynamic range, using a linear detector of narrower dynamic range for display on a device also having a narrow dynamic range. The technique effectively gathers multiple copies of the image with a multiplicative gain factor to ''push'' the data into the linear range of the detector or display. The gray level degeneracy due to the effect of cutoff/oversaturation is removed by dynamic range enhancement/reduction. A high-dynamic-range image is recorded on a sequence of multiple intensity frames from which any information about the original image can be found. One simple way to manipulate the data in the multi-intensity imagery is the data block operation of ''cut and paste,'' with which one can build a merged image interactively that is suitable for display on a monitor of narrow dynamic range. The mathematical representation and signal-to-noise ratio involved are presented and a demonstration by recording and displaying an optical power spectrum of joint transform correlation is also described.