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Kkr&ksr institute of technology &scinces Vinjanampadu Guntur G.Rama Krishna, Ece branch, Email:ramlaxman27@gmail.com Ch.

Harish kumar, Ece branch, Email:harishk.chunduri@gmail.com


This paper narrates the splendid restoration and enhancement techniques used to explore the controversial image face on mars, taken by MGS spacecraft .This image arose world wide controversies and anxiety among the public. The image collected from cydonia in MARS could be an evidence for the presence of MARTIANS (If the land form is alien made). The enhancement techniques depicted in this paper created much interests among the scientific community involved in space exploration. This paper throws light on the procedures followed to restore and enhance the image collected from MARS. It provides information about downsizing, interpolation, and filtering techniques used to enhance face on mars with respective ALGORITHMS. This paper also displays images describing the procedures collected from numerous resources. The filtering techniques used in this paper were verified using the new version of ADOBE photo shop. Though this paper restricts itself to space exploration, the techniques used in this paper can be extended to BIO-MEDICAL applications, BIOMETRICS, ARTIFACTS exploration etc. Several papers are released in every international meet approving or disproving the techniques mentioned in this paper to enhance face on Mars. However, these techniques are now widely in practice. FACE ON MARS!


Digital image processing is an indispensable procedure to explore the hidden information from the visual data. One of the earliest applications of this process was to retrieve digitized newspaper pictures sent through undersea cables between London and New York in early 1920s. Several improvements were made in this field by coding information in several brightness levels. Work on improving images from a space probe began at jet propulsion lab in 1964, for restoring images taken from moon. This paper restricts itself with the techniques of restoration and enhancement of digital images taken by space surveyors like the one to mars.


Any image refers to two-dimensional light intensity function f(x, y) where x

and y are special co-ordinates with their origin at left top end of the image. The value of f at any point is proportional to the brightness of the image at that point. Thus any digital image can be considered as a matrix whose row and column indices

represent a point in the image and the corresponding matrix element value represent the gray level at the point. The elements of such a digital image are called picture elements or PIXELS.

DIGITIZERS : It converts an image into numerical information suitable for

input into a digital computer. This is a very important device in image processing (eg: Image scanners, video grabbers).


Several techniques are followed to explore and restore information from images obtained from space probes. The following is the technique used to restore the image FACE ON MARS.

Step 1:
The first step in the enhancement of an image is the selection of database with which the enhancement must be made. In the case of images obtained at cydonia in mars. The enhanced version had much information than the raw one. In reality most of the comparisons made dont use the raw data either, they use the processed enhancements called as cat box or TJP already present at JPL (Jet propulsion lab, U.S).

The actual raw data (shown below) is very badly underexposed and uniform that it is almost useless as a basis for enhancement but the subsequent processed versions of NASA are better.


The enhanced image using cat box is shown below

DOWNSIZING: Downsizing is one of the acts of processing involved in TJP technique. This process reduces the data present in the image. The reason for this is to reduce some of the noise present in the image but this can also remove the subtle details from an image. ALGORITHM FOR DOWNSIZING:

1) The image is sized down by interpolation by a factor of two to reduce some of the noise. (2) A long, narrow high-pass filter is applied in a vertical orientation to help reduce some of the instrument signature. This signature is seen as the streaking that is noticeable in the original data. (3) A long, narrow low-pass filter is applied in a horizontal orientation to create an intensity average for the image. (4) The results of these filtering operations are then stretched to approximate a Gauss Ian distribution. (5) The results of the high-pass and low-pass processing steps are averaged together to form the final product. (6) The image is flipped about the vertical axis to correct for the camera orientation. STEP 2

This process is also called as resampling or anti-aliasing. This is far different from the pixel replication. In image replication the value of a pixel is just sent to the neighborhood cells as shown below

The result is the bigger version of the original image. This replicated data is called as raw data. Interpolation is an entirely different process. Each pixel, or "Picture Element" has a grayscale value for the all the details in the area it covers. The area of a single pixel in the MGS Face image is about 18.67 square feet (it is somewhat better in the subsequent images). Now this is a rather large area that can

contain all kinds of things (for e.g.: a chair, a TV set, a desk, and they could be all different colors or shades.) Does the MGS camera catch all this? In a camera like the one on MGS space craft all the details in a given area in this case the square pixel - are derived from the average shade or "value" in the 18.67 square foot area.. Each pixel is derived from an eight-digit binary number representing a shade of gray from total black to total white in 256 gradations (extrapolated from an original 128 gray levels recorded by the camera.) The human eye can detect only about 32 different levels of gray, so the digital imaging and subsequent processing constitutes at least a fourfold improvement over visual seeing, especially when enhancement techniques are applied in the computer, which can integrate over these 128 levels. In other words, there is more data in a single pixel than is displayed by that pixel in a raw image.

The above figure explains as to what happens as the camera passes over the edge of a land form .If one darker area has a value of 88, and the lighter area to the right has a grayscale value of 44, then the optics will record an integrated or averaged value of 66 for the shared pixels. The result of this, that the edges and fine details may be lost and unrecognizable in a "raw" transmitted image.

What interpolation does is to take the data in the individual pixels and use their relationships to each other to determine the best solution. These relational values contain more information than is visible to the eye (which can only see about 32 shades of gray) and depending on the algorithm used can recover much of the "lost" (averaged) data concerning the original shape of the object. ALGORITHM:

Step1: The original large pixel is divided into number of smaller pixels Step2: The individual pixel of the raw data, queries and the proscribed number of
surrounding pixels, which contribute to the appropriate values for the new pixel. i.e. The value of the new pixel is derived from the shared values of the original pixel

The above figure is a result of bilinear interpolation, which multiplies the original pixel into four. The adjacent figure, multiplies the original pixel into nine.

Step3: The process then moves on to the next raw pixel and this repeated
until the image is complete.

Step4: If the process has been tested against actual objects for accuracy which all-Interpolative methods used have - then the result can be considered highly reliable.

The result is illustrated in the following figure

Usually bi cubic interpolation is used wherein the value of every pixel is shared by surrounding twelve pixels.


Having discussed down sizing and interpolation techniques we now deal with the enhancement of fine structures. The raw imagery contained a great deal of "saltand-pepper" noise caused by data transmission errors.

The first processing step is to "clean up" the imagery. A 3x3 pixel Laplacian filter is used first to detect outliers (i.e., pixels whose values differ from the local mean by more than a specified threshold). The values of these pixels are then replaced by the local median value computed in a 3x3 window centered about the pixel to maintain the edge structure. The threshold value is selected to reduce the magnitude of the noise without significantly distorting the fine-scale detail in the image.

Contrast stretch is done to remove shading variations due to illumination and albedo variations across the imagery, and increase the local contrast while maintaining the overall tonal balance of the imagery. Over small areas and for isolated features the contrast is enhanced using a global "clip-and-stretch" which assigns pixels below a minimum value to zero, pixels above a maximum value to 255, and pixels in between to the range 1-254. Face after noise removal after clip and stretch

STEP 3: - The image at this stage contains several thin lines that intersect above the
eyes, four broad stripes across the face, and fine structure in the mouth area that appear to some as teeth. Each is discussed below.

Enhancement of Lateral Stripes

A number of broad lateral stripes can be seen in the image of the Face. These features are emphasized as shown in Figure, in which the image was first rotated so that the stripes are in the horizontal direction and then enhanced using a horizontal averaging operation. These lines are caused due to topographical variations.

Enhancement of Thin Lines

Several thin lines, which cross the forehead area, can be seen in the figure. These lines are enhanced using the same process as described above. These features are not aligned in the same direction as the scan lines in and so they are caused either by the sensor or subsequent digital image processing. In addition as seen in first figure they appear in both images further increasing the likelihood that they are all real features.

Fine Structure in Mouth Area 1st day (fig 1) | 40th day (fig 2)

Perhaps the most controversial feature of the Face is the "teeth." In actuality the teeth are fine-scale structures that appear in the mouth area. These features cannot be dismissed as noise in the imagery or artifacts of the processing since they were found in both images taken 40 days apart. Fig 3 is the result of adding the two images (fig 1&2) and dividing by two in order to emphasize the features that are present in both images.

Figure 3

It has been suggested that the teeth are nothing more than noise, which has been emphasized through the improper use/interpretation of image enhancement

techniques. Malians teeth, which are caused by noise in, are identified in our enhancement (Figure 3.)

Thus through enhancement, we could explore great hidden details. CONCLUSION:

Thus the above techniques mentioned in this paper are extensively used to enhance not only space images but also to explore other hidden details from images, which are of great importance to enrich mans knowledge about our UNIVERSE.

Reference: -

www.google.com, www.sciencedirect.com Magazine: Science reporter. Newspaper: Science articles of The Telegraph, The Statesman, and Hindustan Times