A robust smear removal method for inter-frame Charge-Coupled Device star images

Abstract

In order to eliminate the influence of Smear Effect on follow-up processing of star images, this paper researched the source and statistical model of Smear Effect. After researching the working progress of inter-line Charge Coupled Device(CCD), inter-frame CCD and full-frame CCD, this paper builds a statistical model for the background noise and then proposes an algorithm to do radiometric correction in smear images based on modeling and estimating the intensity of background noise in star image. Experimental results indicate that the algorithm in this paper can remove smear effect in star image efficiently while retaining origin information. The method in this paper can eliminate the influence of smear effect in star images while retaining origin information.

Star smear removal for full-frame charge-coupled device images based on Gaussian fitting

“…12, the TopHat algorithm and the Spread TopHat algorithm in Ref. 13, and the method proposed in this paper. It is assumed that the length of the structure elements of TopHat and Spread TopHat is 25 pixels.…”

“…In response to the smear problem, related works have been developed focusing on three topics: removing fake targets in the smeared image after detection, 6 employing special hardware 7 or modifying the design of CCD image sensors, 8 , 9 and numeric algorithms for postfacto correction of image smear 10 – 19 Generally, the latter is considered the most economical and efficient solution. For instance, Huang et al 12 .…”

“…However, the performance is limited, especially for cases with big field of vision (FOV) and a large amount of stars. Another approach specific to the smear problem is the robust smear removal method 13 . This approach builds a statistical model for the background noise and then estimates its intensity to perform the smear calibration.…”

“…Yet, in practical observations, the image of a bright star often resembles an ellipse, instead of a circle, which was taken as the model for stars in Ref. 13. In Ref.…”

Smear correction of highly variable, frame-transfer CCD images with application to polarimetry

“…The first of these assumptions was investigated by Knox [8], who showed that smearing can be used in specific cases to recover the values of saturated pixels in the image. More recently, different smearing correction techniques have been developed that are optimal for specific imaging applications [9,10] or used for real time correction [11].…”