Digital Image Processing

Gray Level Enhancement

Dr. Muhammad Jehanzeb

Gray level enhancement

Some of the simplest, yet most useful,
image processing operations involve the
adjustment of brightness, contrast or color in
an image. This operation is called contrast
enhancement.

Gray level enhancement

A common reason for manipulating these
attributes is the need to compensate for
difficulties in image acquisition.
Contrast enhancement aims to improve an
image such that the content of an image
become visually more pleasing.

A dark image

An enhanced image

 There are several techniques in enhancing

the contrast of digital image such as
histogram stretch, histogram equalization
and adaptive contrast enhancement.
Histogram equalization is a popular
technique for improving the appearance of a
poor image.

 Its function is similar to that of a histogram

stretch but often provides more visually
pleasing results across wider range of
images.

Histogram Equalization Algorithm

Histogram Equalization is a technique where the
histogram of the resultant image is as flat as
possible.
With histogram stretching the overall shape of the
histogram remains the same.
The theoretical basis for histogram equalization
involves probability theory, where the histogram is
treated as the probability distribution of the gray
levels.

Histogram Equalization Algorithm

The histogram equalization process for digital image
consists of four steps:
i. Find the running sum of the histogram values
ii. Normalize the values from step (i) by dividing by the
total number of pixels
iii. Multiply the values from step (ii) by maximum gray
level value and round
iv. Map the graylevel values to the results from step (iii)
using a onetoone correspondence

 Example: Given a 3 bits-image, so the possible range

of values is 0 to 7. Suppose the image has the
following histogram:

Histogram of image

Histogram of original image

 steps to find the histogram-equalized values.

 In order to get the histogramequalized

image, all pixels in the original image with
gray level 0 are set to 1, values of 1 are set 2,
2 set 4, 4 set to 4, and so on
Table shows the histogram of the
histogramequalized image.

Histogram of the histogram-equalized image

Histogram of histogram-equalized image