An Image Enhancement Technique of X-Ray Carry- on Luggage for Detection of Contraband/Illicit Object(s)

Luggage inspection systems play an important role in ensuring national security at airports. In this research, an effort of a new enhancement algorithm of dual-energy Xray carry-on luggage images is proposed to ensure the national security at airports. A new approach of combing High Energy and Low Energy x-ray images, de-noise it and at the end enhance the fused image with histogram specification to improve the contrast. The final image did not only contains the details, but is also backgroundnoise-free and contrast-enhanced, therefore easier to segment automatically or be interpreted by screeners, thus reducing the false alarm rate in X-ray luggage inspection. It is observed that the proposed approach is more suitable for screeners in detecting contraband/illicit objects than using other conventional techniques. Keyword Dual Energy x-ray Image enhancement, image restoration, image fusion, De-noising, Histogram specification.