Optik: Bhupendra Gupta, Mayank Tiwari
Optik: Bhupendra Gupta, Mayank Tiwari
Optik
journal homepage: www.elsevier.de/ijleo
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: In this paper, we propose an efficient method to enhance contrast of digital images. Image contrast
Received 25 December 2014 enhancement is a pre-processing step that improves efficiency of other image dealing applications such
Accepted 11 October 2015 as computer vision and pattern recognition. The proposed method enhances contrast and brightness
of given image using the gamma correction and weighted probability distribution of luminance pixels.
Keywords: Experiments results show that the proposed method is able to enhance contrast of all type of color images
Contrast enhancement
without much affecting its visual and color information.
Gamma correction
© 2015 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
Histogram equalization
Histogram modification
Color preserving framework
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijleo.2015.10.068
0030-4026/© 2015 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.
1672 B. Gupta, M. Tiwari / Optik 127 (2016) 1671–1676
equalization’ (MMBEBHE). This method provides maximum bright- 3. The proposed method
ness preservation. The MMBEBHE proposes to perform the
separation based on the threshold level, which would yield min- The resultant cdf curve of AGCWD [16] method is shown in Fig. 1.
imum absolute mean brightness error [11]. The MMBEBHE is a It is clear from Fig. 1 that for ˛ = 1.2 and ˛ = 0.8 the resultant
useful tool to control the brightness difference between input transformation curve is not increasing smoothly. To prove our this
and processed image. In [12], Chen and Ramli proposed another claim (in image1 for transformation curve ˛ = 1.2) we have marked
interesting method called ‘recursive mean-separate histogram two intervals on x-axis (x1 , x2 ); (x3 , x4 ) and their corresponding
equalization’ (RMSHE), here authors suggested recursive division intervals on y-axis (y1 , y2 ); (y3 , y4 ). The small interval (x1 , x2 ) is
of histograms, based on the local mean. In each recursive step transformed to sufficiently large interval (y1 , y2 ) and in this case
existing sub-histogram is divided into two sub-histograms. After sufficient weights will be assigned to Eq. (3). However on the other
rth recursion the number of sub-histogram is 2r , where number of hand due to non-smooth nature of the curve the large interval (x3 ,
recursion depends on choice of user. Also authors proved math- x4 ) is transformed to a small interval (y3 , y4 ) and hence weights for
ematically that as r increases, the mean brightness of processed a large interval will be not sufficiently large. This may also lead to
image approaches towards the mean brightness of input image. Sim loss of information in processed image.
et al. in [13], improved DSIHE into ‘recursive sub-image histogram To solve this problem and to make the resultant transformation
equalization’ based contrast enhancement (RSIHE), by introduc- curve to be smoothly increasing with sufficient color preservation;
ing recursive segmentation in the similar manner as Chen and we proposed a new method called ‘adaptive gamma correction with
Ramil proposed in [12], this method is similar to RMSHE but it color preserving framework’ (AGCCPF). The proposed method uses
uses median values instead of mean values to divide histogram into two-steps processing; initially it enhances contrast and brightness
sub-histograms. of given image using modified probability distribution of luminance
Recently, S.C. Huang et al. [16], propose ‘efficient contrast pixels followed by the gamma correction. In second step it uses a
enhancement using adaptive gamma correction with weighting color preserving framework for color restoration.
distribution’ (AGCWD). This method is an automatic transforma- The objective of all histogram based contrast enhancement
tion technique that improves the brightness of dimmed images methods is to transform the histogram of an input image closer
via the gamma correction and probability distribution of lumi-
nance pixels; also this method produces enhanced images of
comparable or higher quality than those produced by other
methods [16].
The organization of this work is as follows. After introduc-
ing about research background in Section 1, Section 2 describes
the AGCWD method. Section 3 explains the proposed method in
details. For evaluation of proposed method experimental results are
shown in Section 4. Finally Section 5 summarizes and concludes
the proposed work.
l l 1−cdf (l)
T (l) = (L − 1) = (L − 1) , (3)
L−1 L−1
H́ = H + (1 − )Hu , (4)
where 0 ≤ ≤ 1.
In Fig. 2, we are showing mapping function for different values of
. This mapping function is nothing but the cumulative distribution
function of resultant modified histogram. For = 0.5 the mapping
curve increases smoothly to the maximum value and this causes
no over enhancement in the processed image. Now based on Eq.
(4) the corresponding normalized probability mass function (PMF)
can be given as:
H́(l)
pmf (l) = , (5)
H́
L−1
where H́ = k=0
H́(k). Now based on Eq. (5) the corresponding
cdf is given as:
l
cdf (l) = pmf (k). (6)
k=0
Fig. 3. Set of images used in the proposed work, images are given names as image1 , image2 , up to image12 .
1674 B. Gupta, M. Tiwari / Optik 127 (2016) 1671–1676
where INTIMG is image obtained after applying Eq. (3), INPIMG is illumination due to back-light effect. Generally change in illumi-
input image and PRCIMG is corresponding processed image. Param- nation can be due to many factors, such as location of light source,
eter 0 ≤ ı ≤ 1. It is clear that for ı = 0 PRCIMG = INPIMG and in this case cloud cover, intensity of sunshine, etc. Fig. 3 shows set of images,
there would be maximum color preservation without any contrast used by us in the proposed work.
enhancement in the PRCIMG . For ı = 1 PRCIMG = INTIMG and in this Fig. 4 shows enhancement results of various methods for image2 .
case there would be minimum color preservation with contrast The image2 contains scene with an object and clear sky background.
enhancement. The HE method produces over enhancement and noise enhance-
In the proposed work we are working with color images using ment too; in the processed image (b). Results of other methods
the RGB color model. The RGB color model is an additive color model such as RMSHE and RSIHE are able to enhance the contrast of the
in which red, green, and blue light are added together in various image at the cost of natural appearance’s loss. The CLAHE method
ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model is producing better results but this method is not able to maintain
comes from the initials of the three additive primary colors, red, the mean brightness in the processed image. The AGCWD method
green, and blue. In implementation part of proposed algorithm, we produces good results but in this case color-information of the sky
are applying the algorithm on each color channel of given color in the background is washed out. On the other hand the AGCCPF
image, after that we are combining all three channels to form the method is able to enhance contrast of given image without much
processed image. affecting it color-information and natural appearance.
Table 1 shows results of Absolute Mean Brightness Error (AMBE).
4. Experimental results AMBE is used to calculate difference in mean brightness between
two images. Mathematical expression to calculate AMBE between
In this section, we demonstrate performance of the proposed two images is given as:
method in comparison with some existing HE based contrast
AMBE = |XM − YM |, (8)
enhancement methods, like HE, RMSHE, RSIHE, RSWHE and
AGCWD. For RMSHE, RSIHE and RSWHE we are using recursion where XM and YM are mean brightness of input and processed image
level r = 1. As test images we are taking images having poor respectively.
Based on results of Table 1, we observe that the proposed
method has least values in all 12 images as compare to other meth-
ods. Further if we look at last row of Table 1, which shows average
Fig. 4. Enhancement results of various methods for image2 . Here (a) input image, Fig. 5. Enhancement results of proposed method for image1 , image1 2, image5 and
(b) result of HE, (c) result of RMSHE (r = 1), (d) result of RSIHE (r = 1), (e) result of image9 . Here first column shows the input images second column shows corre-
CLAHE (AMBE = 6.514), (f) result of AGCWD (˛ = 0.8), (g) proposed method ( = 0.4 sponding processed images. For these 4 images we have considered = 0.4 and
and ı = 0.4) (AMBE = 0.011), (h) proposed method ( = 0.25 and ı = 0.4). ı = 0.4.
B. Gupta, M. Tiwari / Optik 127 (2016) 1671–1676 1675
Table 1
Absolute Mean Brightness Error (AMBE).
results of AMBE then we find that the proposed method has least where MSE is Mean Square Error and it is defined as:
average AMBE values among other methods. This shows that our
1
M N
method is able to maintain mean brightness of input image in the 2
MSE = |X(i, j) − Y (i, j)| , (10)
processed image. MN
i=1 j=1
Table 2 shows results of Peak Signal to Noise Ratio matrix. Peak
Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) is widely used matrix which is used to where X(i, j) and Y(i, j) denotes intensity at location (i, j) in the input
measure contrast enhancement [13,14,17,18]. Greater PSNR values and processed image respectively.
indicate better the image quality [14]. To calculate PSNR between Table 2 proves that proposed method enhances more contrast
two images (each image is having L discrete gray levels in the range than HE, RMSHE, RSIHE, CLAHE and AGCWD (as higher PSNR value
{X0 , X1 , . . ., XL−1 }), mathematical expression is given as: indicates better contrast enhancement [13,14,17,18]). On the basis
(L − 1)2
PSNR = 10log10 , (9)
MSE
Fig. 6. Enhancement results of proposed method for image4 , image6 , image7 and Fig. 7. Enhancement results of proposed method for image2 , image1 0, image1 1, and
image8 . Here first column shows the input images second column shows corre- image3 . Here first column shows the input images second column shows corre-
sponding processed images. For these 4 images we have considered = 0.4 and sponding processed images. For these 4 images we have considered = 0.4 and
ı = 0.4. ı = 0.4.
1676 B. Gupta, M. Tiwari / Optik 127 (2016) 1671–1676
Table 2
Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR).
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