An Adaptive Contrast Enhancement Method using Dynamic Range Segmentation for Brightness Preservation

In this paper, we propose an adaptive contrast enhancement method using dynamic range segmentation. Histogram Equalization (HE) method is widely used for contrast enhancement. However, histogram equalization method is not suitable for commercial display because it may cause undesirable artifacts due to the significant change in brightness. The proposed algorithm segments the dynamic range of the histogram and redistributes the pixel intensities by the segment area ratio. The proposed method may cause over compressed effect when intensity distribution of an original image is concentrated in specific narrow region. In order to overcome this problem, we introduce an adaptive scale factor. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm suppresses the significant change in brightness and provides wide histogram distribution compared with histogram equalization.