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A comparison of contrast measurements in passive autofocus systems for low contrast images

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Abstract

A number of contrast measurements have been investigated and compared in the literature. Each of them exhibits an ideal curve with a well defined peak standing for the best focused image. However, a focused image obtained in low light conditions possesses a small contrast value, which may be easily influenced by noise. In this case, contrast measurements may generate fluctuant curves with many local peaks. This paper presents a comparison among six contrast measurements in passive autofocus systems towards a non-previously researched object of low contrast images. The criterium to evaluate the performance of each measurement is unimodality. And we assess the similarity of the resulting curves with an ideal focus curve which exhibits a single peak and an absence of plateau. Experimental results from six typical image sequences indicate that Tenengrad and CMAN approaches yield the best performance, but it is still necessary to derive a more elaborated method because both methods fail to generate a single sharp peak in some circumstances.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the Young Scientists Foundation of Wuhan University of Science and Technology (2012xz013), the Program of Wuhan Subject Chief Scientist (201150530152), the Educational Commission of Hubei Province (Q20101101, Q20101110), the project from Hubei Provincial Natural Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholar of China (No. 2010CDA090), the project from Wuhan Chen Guang Project (No. 201150431095), the Program for Outstanding Young Science and Technology Innovation Teams in Higher Education Institutions of Hubei Province (No. T201202), and the Natural Science Foundation of China (60803160, 60975031, 61100055).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science and Technology, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, China

    Xin Xu, Xiaolong Zhang, Shunxin Li, Xiaoming Liu, Xiaofeng Wang & Jinshan Tang

  2. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Yinglin Wang

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  1. Xin Xu
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  2. Yinglin Wang
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  3. Xiaolong Zhang
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  4. Shunxin Li
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  5. Xiaoming Liu
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Correspondence to Xin Xu.

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Xu, X., Wang, Y., Zhang, X. et al. A comparison of contrast measurements in passive autofocus systems for low contrast images. Multimed Tools Appl 69, 139–156 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-012-1194-x

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