In materials physics, X-ray image of organometallic composites and other materials are often severely degraded by superimposed noise due to scattered radiation and by the limited spatial frequency response of the instrumentation. The authors investigate the effect of a simple and fast digital enhancement procedure for images acquired by energy dispersive X-ray analysis in electron microscopy. The degree of image enhancement possible is demonstrated on a number of typical specimens. In the first example, analysis of an X-ray map shows ill-defined manganese dioxide particles suspended in polymer; in the second example, the procedure is used to highlight and delineate the pattern of corrosion on gas turbine blades. The flexibility of the approach is tested by further application to examples illustrating different imaging modalities encounted in nuclear medicine.