Xianfang Sun, Paul L. Rosin, Ralph R. Martin, Frank C. Langbein. Bas-Relief Generation Using Adaptive Histogram Equalisation. IEEE Trans. Visualization and Computer Graphics, 15(4):642-653,2009. [DOI:10.1109/TVCG.2009.21] [PDF]
Relief
An algorithm is presented to automatically generate bas-reliefs based on adaptive histogram equalisation (AHE), starting from an input height field. A mesh model may alternatively be provided, in which case a height field is first created via orthogonal or perspective projection. The height field is regularly gridded and treated as an image, enabling a modified AHE method to be used to generate a bas-relief with a user-chosen height range. We modify the original image-contrast-enhancement AHE method to also use gradient weights, to enhance the shape features of the bas-relief. To effectively compress the height field, we limit the height-dependent scaling factors used to compute relative height variations in the output from height variations in the input; this prevents any height differences from having too great an effect. Results of AHE over different neighbourhood sizes are averaged to preserve information at different scales in the resulting bas-relief. Compared to previous approaches, the proposed algorithm is simple and yet largely preserves original shape features. Experiments show that our results are in general comparable to and in some cases better than the best previously published methods.
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