ROMMEL BARTOLOME


Enhancing images using Fourier Transform





Removal of repeating patterns by removing frequencies



For this blog entry, I’ll be discussing about Fourier transform. For those who do not know anything about Fourier Transform (FT), just imagine that it’s a way to a new world—in this world, you see frequency profiles instead of the usual things you see.





In this world, which is called the Fourier domain, you can remove (or add) details that is repetitive in the ‘real’ world. For example, if there are 5 equally spaced ball pens in a table, if you go to the ‘Fourier World’, you can see this as peaks. These peaks can be removed and when you go back to the ‘real world’, the ball pens will be gone, leaving you with the table.


To get you started, we first want to be familiar with how this Fourier thing goes on. Figure 1 show different Fourier transforms of different image patterns. We generated a circle, an annulus, a square, a horizontal double slit, a vertical double slit and two dirac deltas symmetric with the y-axis.


Figure 1. Different image patterns: (a) circle, (c) annulus, (e) square, (g) horizontal double slit, (i) vertical double slit and (k) two dirac deltas symmetric with the y-axis and their corresponding Fourier transform (b, d, f, h, j and l, respectively)


The circle and the annulus have a similar Fourier Transform, which are both circular in nature. The square has a square-ish FT which is indicative of its shape. More shapes (or apertures in this case) have unique FTs. Next are the FTs of the slits. Again, both FTs are indicative of its original image. Last is the FT of two dots symmetric along the y-axis. We can see that it has a somewhat sinusoidal pattern along the x-direction.


Note that we may be exchanging terms FT and FFT. FT means Fourier Transform while FFT means Fast Fourier Transform. The main difference is well, the latter is, uhm, fast. Yeah, I’m not joking! FFT uses the 2^x where x is a number to optimize FT, making it fast. Most programs use FFT to save time instead of directly evaluating FT by itself. :)


For the next part of the activity, we were asked to find the FT of two dirac deltas, two circles and two squares. Figure 2 shows the results. The first column shows the original images, the second column shows the 3 Dimensional look of the original image, then we display is FFT in 3D and 2D. The dots show a fan-like FT with sinusoidal ridges. As for the circles, it is similar to the FT of that of in Figure 1b. Conversely, the FFT of the squares is similar to that of Figure 1f. This is again because certain apertures have a unique corresponding FFT pattern.​


Figure 2. The 3D rendering of two dots, circles and squares with their corresponding FFT in 2D and 3D.


Next is we try to examine the effect of varying the variance of a Gaussian function. Figure 3 shows the results. What we can conclude about this is that the larger the variance, the smaller is its FFT.


Figure 3. The 2D and 3D FFT of Gaussian functions in increasing variance.


Now, we create a 200×200 matrix of zeroes with 10 points in random with values of 1. These will be the deltas. This is called the array A. We also make a 200×200 matrix with a single pattern at the middle. This one shall be called array d. We then convolve the two by taking the Fourier the Transform of both A and d, then multiplying it element-per-element then taking its inverse Fourier transform. Figure 4 shows the results. We tried it into three types of pattern, one is a cross (which is within the 5×5 pattern in the manual), an arbitrary cute shape which is larger (to try out what happen if we do not use a 5×5 pattern) and a large circle (to go the extreme!). Figure 4 shows the results. What just happen is the points where there is 1, the pattern is replicated. Check out the convolution when using the large circle, it may even be used for a wall paper. 😀


Figure 4. Convolution of two images. The random dots are convoluted with a certain pattern. The resulting convolution is shown in 2D and 3D.


Next is we try to examine the effect of pixel spacing in images. We used a 200×200 array with equally spaced 1s. We get the FT of each. Figure 5 shows this. As you can see, when the spacing of the dots are smaller, the peaks in the FT is few. As it the spacing of the dots increase, the number of peaks in the FT also increases.


Figure 5. The effect of the pixel spacing in the FT domain.


We also try if only the x-axis and the y-axis have the equally spaced ones. We see that the larger the spacing, the more the ‘boxes’ appear. It Is similar to that on Figure 4.


Figure 6. The The effect of the pixel spacing in the x and y-axis in the FT domain.


Now we go the more exciting part! We shall use FT to enhance images. JFirst is we use it to an image of the moon with lines (Figure 6a). This is due to the fact that the whole image is a collection of images. Using Scilab, we first take the Fourier transform of the image (Figure 6c). As you can see, at the y-axis are small dots. Those are the lines which we need to take out. We have used a mask (Figure 6d) to get rid of the peaks in the y-axis. I would like to acknowledge Ms. Krizia Lampa for the mask because she taught me how to use Photoshop in creating the mask! ;D I was really having a hard time doing it but thanks to her, I had to do it very fast. You just need to load the image in Photoshop, create a new layer, then with the pencil tool, blacken out the white pixels that you need to blacken out, hide the image of the FT, and put up a white background and voila! You have now your mask! You must now multiply the mask with the FT. J Taking the inverse FT of the masked FFT will give you the enhanced image (see Figure 7b). It’s the old image without the lines! 😀


Figure 7. An image with recurring lines (a) was Fourier Transformed (c). A mask (d) was multiplied to the Fourier transform to remove the lines, creating (b).


We now try the same technique to a painting (Figure 8). We crop out a small portion of the painting (see red box and Figure 9a) and then try to remove the canvas weave patterns. The FT of the image is seen in Figure 9c and the mask used is in Figure 9d. As you can see, we have successfully removed the weave patterns! Yay! Check that in Figure 9b, the strokes are seen better. 😀


Figure 8. The painting used where the weave patterns are removed.


Figure 9. An image with weaving pattern (a) was Fourier Transformed (c). A mask (d) was multiplied to the Fourier transform to remove the weaving pattern, creating (b).


Lastly is we invert the filter mask in Figure 9b and then take its inverse Fourier transform. The result can be seen in Figure 10. It can be described as that of a circular aperture’s FFT as seen in Figure 1. However, when you try to look closely, one can see ‘weave’ patterns. Amazing! 😀


Figure 10. The inverted grayscale image of the mask in Figure 9b and its Fourier transform.





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