Research Article
Vol. 58, No. 34 / 1 December 2019 / Applied Optics G351
High-contrast anisotropic edge enhancement free
of shadow effect
Zhongzheng Gu,
1
Da Yin,
1
Shouping Nie,
1
Shaotong Feng,
1
Fangjian Xing,
1
Jun Ma,
3,4
AND Caojin Yuan
1,2,
*
1
Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Opto-Electronic Technology, School of Physics and Technology, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, 210023, China
2
Jiangsu Center for Collaborative Innovation in Geographical Information Resource Development and Application, Nanjing, 210023, China
3
School of Electronic Engineering and Optoelectronic Techniques, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210094, China
4
e-mail: majun@njust.edu.cn
*Corresponding author: yuancj@njnu.edu.cn
Received 26 June 2019; revised 20 October 2019; accepted 21 October 2019; posted 22 October 2019 (Doc. ID 371110);
published 21 November 2019
We propose a Bessel-like composite vortex filter to perform high-contrast and power-controlled anisotropic edge
enhancement with shadow-effect-free and low background noise. The background noise, which is commonly
found and strongly decreases the filtered image quality in previous anisotropic vortex filters, is effectively reduced
by suppressing the side lobes of the system point spread function, thereby increasing the image edge contrast to
0.98. The shadow effect is totally eliminated by keeping the radial symmetry of the filtering process, which makes
edges sharper and improves image resolution. By introducing a weighting factor between two opposite vortex
filter components, the power of edge enhancement becomes controllable. Numerical simulations and experimen-
tal results prove that the proposed filter achieves higher-contrast edge enhancement for both phase-contrast and
amplitude-contrast objects. © 2019 Optical Society of America
https://doi.org/10.1364/AO.58.00G351
1. INTRODUCTION
Edge enhancement techniques have been widely employed
in industrial inspection [1,2] astronomical observation [3,4],
and fingerprint identification [5,6]. Fourier filtering and
Hilbert transform methods are often used to implement edge
enhancement. The dark-field method related to Fourier filter-
ing operations attenuate most power owing to being partially
absorptive [7]. Vortex filtering based on Hilbert transform has
attracted increasing attention for its sensitivity to the gradient of
the complex refractive index of an object, which leads to strong
edge contrast enhancements for both phase-contrast [8,9] and
amplitude-contrast objects [10,11]. Isotropic edge enhance-
ment [12,13], which enhances the object edges regardless of its
orientation, is always adopted to demonstrate the effect of scalar
vortex filter. For biomedical and condensed matter samples and
objects, a vector vortex filter is used to perform edge enhance-
ment [14,15]. However, in practical applications, where the
local features of some edges are of more interest than those of
others, anisotropic edge enhancement techniques should be
employed to emphasize these edges.
Currently, anisotropic edge enhancement is commonly
achieved by introducing fractional topological charge [16,17],
off-axis vortex [18,19], and vortex phase with astigmatism [20].
It is worth noting that an apparent shadow effect appears in the
output plane once the radial symmetry of the filtering process is
broken. Therefore, the results obtained by the above methods
are always not satisfied. A superposed vortex filter made up of
the superposition of two opposite vortices is also proposed to
perform anisotropic edge enhancement [21]. However, the side
lobes by the diffraction light from the line dislocations and the
sharp aperture edge of the superposed vortex filter will worsen
the image quality. Although side lobes causing background noise
have been partially eliminated in isotropic filters by Laguerre–
Gaussian spatial filter (LGSF) [22] and Airy spiral phase filter
(AiSF) [23], those in anisotropic filters still need to be solved.
Additionally, the vector vortex filter shows good performances
in anisotropic edge enhancement [24,25], but the superfluous
side lobes still exist, and the polarization state needs to be care-
fully regulated [26–28]. Therefore, it is necessary to design an
anisotropic filter to obtain high-contrast edge enhancement
with shadow-effect-free and low background noise.
In this paper, we propose a Bessel-like composite vortex
filter (BLCVF), which can be used to achieve high-contrast
anisotropic edge enhancement for phase-contrast and
amplitude-contrast objects. By modifying amplitude distri-
bution with Bessel-like function, the side lobes of the filter
are almost completely suppressed, according to the numerical
analysis of the point spread function (PSF). Moreover, without
1559-128X/19/34G351-07 Journal © 2019 Optical Society of America