AbstractToday’s camera systems used for machine vision and scientific applications have intra-scene dynamic ranges up to 16 bit and therefore A/D converters with up to 16 bit resolution per pixel. Unfortunately, the linear amplification of electrons also forces a linear or even quadratic increase of the image noise variance with the signal. Based on a method published in 2016 (B. Jähne, M. Schwarzbauer, tm-Technisches Messen 83.1), this paper describes a more general nonlinear transformation which equalizes the combined effect of temporal noise and photo-response non-uniformity (PRNU) and/or temporal noise in the illumination system of an image sensor. With this generalisation it is possible to use the equalisation also for microscopic applications for which an example is discussed.
Noise Variance Estimation Using Image Noise Cross-Correlation Model on SEM Images