Adaptive gamma correction based on cumulative histogram for enhancing near-infrared images

Histogram-based methods have been proven their ability in image enhancement. To improve low contrast while preserving details and high brightness in near-infrared images, a novel method called adaptive gamma correction based on cumulative histogram (AGCCH) is studied in this paper. This novel image enhancement method improves the contrast of local pixels through adaptive gamma correction (AGC), which is formed by incorporating a cumulative histogram or cumulative sub-histogram into the weighting distribution. Both qualitatively and quantitatively, experimental results demonstrate that the proposed image enhancement with the AGCCH method can perform well in brightness preservation, contrast enhancement, and detail preservation, and it is superior to previous state-of-the-art methods. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.