• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.11
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• pp.155-164
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• 2014

Local histogram equalization is one of the most popular ways of enhancing the local brightness features of an input image. However, local histogram equalization reveals some problems. First, undesired artifacts are produced by over-enhancing the local features. Second, the enhancement of local features does not always result in global contrast enhancement. To cope with these problems, we propose an illumination driven local histogram equalization method. First, to estimate the illumination information, the proposed method combines the input image and the blurred image produced through the process of the down-sampling and the up-sampling. Next, the proposed method adaptively adjusts the mapping function estimated by the local histogram equalization using the information of the illumination. As a result, the proposed illumination information driven local histogram equalization method simultaneously enhances the global and the local contrast levels while preventing any local artifacts. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the conventional methods on objective and subjective criteria.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.7 no.3 s.18
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• pp.101-109
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• 2004

Image enhancement for Infrared imaging system is mainly based on the global histogram equalization. The global histogram equalization(GHE) is a method in which each pixel is equalized by using a whole histogram of an image. GHE is speedy and effective for real-time imaging system but its method fails to enhance the fine details. On the other hand, the basic local histogram equalization(LHE) method uses sliding a window and. the pixels under the window region are equalized over the whole output dynamic range. The LHE is adequate to enhance the fine details. But this method is computationally slow and noises are over-enhanced. So various local histogram equalization methods have been already presented to overcome these problems of LHE. In this paper, a new regional dynamic range histogram equalization (RDRHE) is presented. RDRHE improves the equalization quality while reducing the computational burden.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.748-760
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• 2012

In case brightness distribution is concentrated in a region, it is difficult to classify the image features. To solve this problem, we apply global histogram equalization and local histogram equalization to images. In case of global histogram equalization, it can be too bright or dark because it doesn't consider the density of brightness distribution. Thus, it is difficult to enhance the local contrast in the images. In case of local histogram equalization, it can produce unexpected blocks in the images. In order to enhance the contrast in the images, this paper proposes a local histogram equalization based on the Gaussian Mixture Models(GMMs) in regions of histogram. Mean and variance parameters in each regions is updated EM-algorithm repeatedly and then ranges of equalization on each regions. The experimental results performed with image of various contrasts show that the proposed algorithm is better than the global histogram equalization.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers D
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• v.53 no.2
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• pp.76-85
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• 2004

In this paper, the contrast enhancement method of thermal image is proposed and it is the plateau equalization algorithm using local histogram for the real time display of infrared imagery. Through hardware implementing, its practicality and adequacy are proved. Examinations are executed to verify the effect of contrast enhancement by bright control and contrast control automatic to the plateau value in the manual mode, and that verified the effect of contrast enhancement in the automatic mode and the practicality in the real system. According to the experiment results, the proposed "the application of local histogram and plateau equalization algorithm for contrast enhancement of real time thermal image"in this dissertation is the verified method for the thermal imaging contrast enhancement.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.11 no.6
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• pp.737-745
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• 2008

In this paper, a novel neighborhood metric of histogram equalization (HE) algorithm for contrast enhancement is presented. We present a refinement of HE using neighborhood metrics with a general framework which orders pixels based on a sequence of sorting functions which uses both global and local information to remap the image greylevels. We tested a novel sorting key with the suggestion of using the original image greylevel as the primary key and a novel neighborhood distinction metric as the secondary key, and compared HE using proposed distinction metric and other HE methods such as global histogram equalization (GHE), HE using voting metric and HE using contrast difference metric. We found that our method can preserve advantages of other metrics, while reducing drawbacks of them and avoiding undesirable over-enhancement that can occur with local histogram equalization (LHE) and other methods.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics S
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• v.36S no.12
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• pp.58-66
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• 1999

In this paper, an advanced histogram equalization algorithm for contrast enhancement is presented. Histogram equalization is the most popular algorithm. Global histogram equalization is simple and fast, but its contrast enhancement power is relatively low. Local histogram equalization, on the other hand, can enhance overall contrast more effectively, but the complexity of computation required is very high. In this paper, a low pass filter type mask is used to get a sub-block histogram equalization function to more simply produce the high contrast. The low pass filter type mask is realized by partially overlapped sub-block histogram equalization (POSHE). With the proposed method. the computation overhead is reduced by a factor of about one hundred compared to that of local histogram equalization while still achieving high contrast.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.691-700
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• 2015

Here, we present a new framework for histogram equalization in which both local and global contrasts are enhanced using neighborhood metrics. When checking neighborhood information, filters can simultaneously improve image quality. Filters are chosen depending on image properties, such as noise removal and smoothing. Our experimental results confirmed that this does not increase the computational cost because the filtering process is done by our proposed arrangement of making the histogram while checking neighborhood metrics simultaneously. If the two methods, i.e., histogram equalization and filtering, are performed sequentially, the first method uses the original image data and next method uses the data altered by the first. With combined histogram equalization and filtering, the original data can be used for both methods. The proposed method is fully automated and any spatial neighborhood filter type and size can be used. Our experiments confirmed that the proposed method is more effective than other similar techniques reported previously.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.15-24
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• 2008

This paper proposes a scheme of global image contrast enhancement using local contrast improvement. Methods of global image contrast enhancement redistribute the image gray level distribution using histogram equalization without considering image properties, and cause the result image to include image pixels with excessive brightness. On the other hand, methods of the block-based local image contrast enhancement have blocking artifacts and a problem of eliminating important image features during an image process to reduce them. In order to solve these problems, the proposed method executes the block-based histogram equalization on temporary images that an input image is divided into various fixed-size blocks. And then it performs the global contrast enhancement by applying the global histogram equalization functions to the original input image. Since the proposed method selects the best histogram equalization function from temporary images that are improved by the block-based local image contrast enhancement, it has the advantages of both the local and global image contrast enhancement approaches.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.192-194
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• 2003

Since the details in quasi-homogeneous region will be destroyed from the conventional global image enhancement method such as histogram equalization. This defect is caused by the saturation of gray level in equalization process. So the local histogram equalization for each quasi-homogeneous region will be used in order to improve the details in the region itself. To obtain the quasi- homogeneous regions, the original image must be segmented. Here we applied the watershed transform to the interesting image. Since the watershed transform is based on mathematical morphology, therefore, the regions touch can be effectively separated. Hence two adjacent regions which have the similar gray pixels will be split off. The process will be independently applied to three different spectral images. Then three different colors are assigned to each processed image in order to produce a color composite image. By the proposed algorithm, the result image shows the better perception on image details. Therefore, the high efficiency of image classification can be obtained by using this color image.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics B
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• v.32B no.12
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• pp.1603-1613
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• 1995

The goal of enhancement is to improve the perceptual aspect and visual appearance of images for human viewers. The objectives of image enhancement vary according to its specific application and an image enhancement algorithms used for a specific objective may not be accepted in some other applications. In this paper we review some of conventional enhancement techniques, such as global histogram equalization(GHE), local histogram equalization(LHE), clipped histogram equalization(CHE). We also describe some modified version of these algorithms. The proposed method is to detect detail information. We distinquish edge from nonedge and apply histigram equalization respectively. Simulation results demonstrate the performance of the proposed method for medical image.