Local ternary patterns (LTP) are an extension of local binary patterns (LBP). Unlike LBP, it does not threshold the pixels into 0 and 1, rather it uses a threshold constant to threshold pixels into three values. Considering k as the threshold constant, c as the value of the center pixel, a neighboring pixel p, the result of threshold is:

{ 1 , if  p > c + k 0 , if  p > c − k  and  p < c + k − 1 if  p < c − k {\displaystyle {\begin{cases}1,&{\text{if }}p>c+k\\0,&{\text{if }}p>c-k{\text{ and }}p<c+k\\-1&{\text{if }}p<c-k\\\end{cases}}}

In this way, each thresholded pixel has one of the three values. Neighboring pixels are combined after thresholding into a ternary pattern. Computing a histogram of these ternary values will result in a large range, so the ternary pattern is split into two binary patterns. Histograms are concatenated to generate a descriptor double the size of LBP.