Contrast Enhancement using Mode-Separate Histogram Equalization

Abstract

Due to the inferior quality of image capturing devices and acute environmental condition, digital images may suffer from poor contrast. Several histogram equalizing methods have been proposed to enhance these images but most of them either create over enhancement with artifacts or cannot fulfill consumers’ desired contrast. However, due to having improper handling of the pixels, histogram equalization (HE) based techniques often fail. Hence, a new image enhancement approach has been introduced here named as Mode-Separate Histogram Equalization (MSHE) which finds a separation point using most frequent intensity of an image and afterwards HE is applied. In experiments qualitative and quantitative assessments exhibits that the performance of MSHE is better than other contrast enhancement with brightness preservation techniques.