Contrast enhancement based on a novel homogeneity measurement

Contrast enhancement is a very important issue in image processing, pattern recognition and computer vision. These are mainly: (I) indirect method of contrast enhancement and (2) direct method of contrast enhancement. The indirect method is to modify the histogram, which is not efficient and effective, since it only stretches the global distribution of the intensity. The direct method is to define a measurement of the contrast and use it to enhance the contrast. In this paper, we propose a novel homogeneity measurement and utilize it to define and enhance the contrast. The proposed approach uses both the local and global information. We have experimented the proposed algorithm on a variety of images, and the results prove that the proposed method has better performance than the existing methods, no over-enhancement/under-enhancement and more robust. (C) 2003 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.