Quality Enhancement of the SEM Images

The aim of this work is to increase the quality of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images recorded on chitosan-based films doped with gold particles of different shapes at nano- and micrometric sizes as SERS substrates for sensors. The SEM images depicting the material surface are not linearly illuminated because the contained gold particles show differences in height and distribution within the film, some of their edges being not clearly delimited. Therefore, a four-steps image quality enhancing algorithm to increase the visibility of details in SEM images is built. The proposed algorithm contains the following imaging filters: shock filter, image sharpening, homomorphic filter, contrast stretch. The advantages of using this algorithm are emphasized by a set of illustrative images consisting of the original SEM images and enhanced quality SEM images as well.