• Journal of Korea Society of Digital Industry and Information Management
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.193-198
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• 2010

In this paper, an efficient contrast enhancement algorithm using histogram stretching is proposed. Histogram equalization (HE) and histogram stretching (HS) are effective techniques for contrast enhancement. However, HE and HS result often in excessive contrast enhancement. Proposed technique not only produces better results than those of conventional contrast enhancement techniques, but is also adaptively adjusted to image contents.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2004.08c
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• pp.867-871
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• 2004

In this paper, a new analytic approach for shape preserving contrast enhancement is presented. Contrast enhancement is achieved by means of segmental histogram stretching modification which preserves the given image shape, not distorting the original shape. After global stretching, the image is partitioned into several level-sets according to threshold condition. The image information of each level-set is represented as typical value based on grouped differential values. The basic property is modified into common local schemes, thereby introducing the enhanced effect through extreme discrimination between subsets. The scheme is based on stretching the histogram of subsets in which the intensity gray levels between connected pixels are approximately same In spite of histogram widening, stretched by local image information, it neither creates nor destroys the original image, thereby preserving image shape and enhancing the contrast. By designing local histogram stretching operations, we can preserve the original shape of level-sets of the image, and also enhance the global intensity. Thus it can hold the main properties of both global and local image schemes, which leads to versatile applications in the field of digital epigraphy.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.287-296
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• 2012

Although low spatial resolution satellite images like MODIS and GOCI can be important to observe land surface, it is often difficult to visually interpret the imagery because of the low contrast by prevailing cloud covers. We proposed a simple and adaptive stretching algorithm to enhance image contrast over land areas in cloudy images. The proposed method is basically a linear algorithm that stretches only non-cloud pixels. The adaptive linear stretch method uses two values: the low limit (L) from image statistics and upper limit (U) from low boundary value of cloud pixels. The cloud pixel value was automatically determined by pre-developed empirical function for each spectral band. We used MODIS and GOCI images having various types of cloud distributions and coverage. The adaptive contrast stretching method was evaluated by both visual interpretation and statistical distribution of displayed brightness values.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.395-401
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• 2010

Image enhancement algorithm aims to improve the visual quality of low contrast image through eliminating the noise and blurring, increasing contrast, and raising detail. This paper proposes adaptive dynamic range linear stretching(ADRLS) algorithm based on advantages of existing methods. ADRLS method is focused on generating sub-histograms of the majority through partitioning the histogram of input image and applying adaptive scale factor. Generated sub-histograms are finally applied by linear stretching(LS) algorithm. In order to validate proposed method, it is compared with LS and histogram equalization(HE) algorithm generally used. As the result, the proposed method show to improve contrast of input image and to preserve distinct characteristics of histogram by controlling excessive change of brightness.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.11 no.12
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• pp.2398-2405
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• 2007

This paper proposes a contrast enhancement technique which stretches the intensity surfaces of image to improve the quality of the digital photos. The proposed method enhances the contrast of image by stretching the intensity surface of the original image to the maximum range of the output image in proportion to the distances between the original intensity surface and upper, lower intensity surface, respectively. The upper and lower intensity surfaces are generated from the original intensity surface by gaussian smoothing. In the experiments, digital color images in a variety of illumination conditions were used and the proposed method was compared with other several existed image enhancement algorithms, which are histogram stretching, surface stretching, histogram equalization, gamma correction and retinex. It was proved that the experimental results were more natural visually without deterioration of gradation.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.7-14
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• 2013

As mobiles devices with high-spec camera built in are used widely, the visual quality enhancement of the high-resolution images turns out to be one of the key capabilities of the mobile devices. Due to the limited computational resources of the mobile devices and the size of the high-resolution images, we should choose an image processing algorithm not too complex and use an efficient implementation technology. One of the simple and widely used image quality enhancement algorithms is contrast stretching. Java libraries running on a virtual machine, JNI (Java Native Interface) based native C/C++, and NEONTM SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) are common implementation technologies in the case of Android smartphones. Using these three implementation technologies, we have implemented two image contrast stretching algorithms - linear and equalized, and compared the computation times. The native C/C++ and the NEONTM SIMD outperformed the native C/C++ implementation by 56-78 and 50-76 time faster respectively.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.15 no.12
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• pp.37-45
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• 2010

This paper proposes a novel contrast enhancement method which determines the stretching ranges based on the distribution densities of segmented sub-histogram. In order to enhance the quality of image effectively, the contrast histogram is segmented into sub-histograms based on the density in each brightness region. Then the stretching range of each sub-histogram is determined by analysing its distribution density. The higher density region is extended wider than lower density region in the histogram. This method solves the over stretching problem, because it stretches using density rate of each area on the histogram. To evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, the experiments have been carried out on complex contrast images, and its superiority has been confirmed by comparing with the conventional methods.

• Journal of the Institute of Convergence Signal Processing
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.239-244
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• 2009

Image contrast enhancement has an important role in image processing applications. Conventional contrast enhancement techniques, histogram stretching and histogram equalization, and many methods based on histogram equalization often fail to produce satisfactory results for broad variety of low-contrast images. So, this paper proposes a new image contrast enhancement method based on the clustering method. The number of cluster of histogram is found by analysing the histogram of original image. The histogram components is classified using K-means algorithm. And then these histogram components are performed histogram stretching and histogram equalization selectively by comparing cluster range with pixel rate of cluster. From the expremental results, the proposed method was more effective than conventional contrast enhancement techniques.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.29 no.8
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• pp.504-508
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• 2010

In conventional diagnostic ultrasound strain imaging, when displaying strain image on a monitor, human visual characteristics are utilized such that hard regions are displayed as dark and soft regions are displayed as bright. Thus, hard regions representing tumor or cancer are displayed as dark, decreasing the contrast inside the lesion. Because the lesion area is stiff and thus displayed as dark, a method of inverting the image brightness and thereby increasing the contrast in the lesion for better diagnostic purposes is proposed wherein a postcompression signal is extended in the time domain by a factor corresponding to the reciprocal of the amount of the applied compression using a technique termed globally uniform stretching. Experiments were carried out to verify the proposed method on an ultrasound elasticity phantom with radio-frequency data acquired from a diagnostic ultrasound clinical scanner. It is found that the new method improves the contrast-to-noise ratio by a factor of up to about 1.8 compared to a conventional strain imaging method that employs a reversed gray color map without globally uniform stretching.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2007.08a
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• pp.1035-1038
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• 2007

In this paper, we propose a color image improvement method. The proposed algorithms are classified with the adaptive contrast stretching method for contrast enhancement and the adaptive saturation enhancement method for saturation enhancement. The adaptive contrast stretching method is to compensate a significant change of brightness while luminance is processed. The adaptive saturation enhancement method inhibits its saturation from de-saturation and oversaturation while chrominance is processed. The proposed algorithms are focused on a preference color processing in order to generate better image quality than the algorithms focused on a uniform color processing for human vision.