Directional edge enhancement using a liquid-crystal display

We present a method for orientation-selective enhancement of the first derivatives of an image. The proposed method is based on the polarization properties of the twisted-nematic liquid-crystal displays (LCDs). LCDs are manufactured to work between a polarizer–analyzer pair, and for a given incident polarization direction, the image contrast will depend on the analyzer orientation. In particular, two analyzer orientations of interest could be identified for the proposed experiments: one that reproduces the image displayed on the LCD, and the other one (orthogonal to the former) that gives a negative (contrast reversed) replica of the original image. By placing a beamsplitter after the LCD, two images are spatially separated, analyzed by linear polarizers in perpendicular directions, and then slightly displaced. When the original image and its displaced (contrast reverted) replica are imagined together across a plane, one obtains a resultant image with enhanced first derivatives along a specific direction. Unlike the usual Fourier (coherent) image processing, the technique proposed here works with incoherent illumination. Validation experiments are presented.