ADAPTIVE GAMMA CORRECTION WITH WEIGHTING DISTRIBUTION BASED

CONTRAST ENHANCEMENT FOR IMAGE AND VIDEO

Dr. N. MUTHUKUMARAN, M.E., Ph.D

Associate Professor/ ECE,
Francis Xavier Engineering College,
Anna University, Chennai,
Tirunelveli-627003, Tamilnadu, INDIA.
Email: kumaranece@gmail.com

Abstract:- In this research module, an efficient method is proposed to modify histograms and
enhance contrast in digital images using Adaptive Gamma Correction with Weighting
Distribution (AGCWD) algorithm. The objective of this module is used to improve the
quality of an image by applying the image enhancement, therefore the final output image is a
high quality original image. In this module Image enhancement plays a very important role in
digital image and video processing. Here an automatic transformation technique is used to
improve the brightness of images via the gamma correction algorithm and probability
distribution of luminance pixels values. So, the level of contrast enhancement can be adjusted
and thus noise forcefulness may be easily incorporated into the optimization techniques. In
this module to enhance video, the temporal based method is used for regarding the
differences between each frame to improve the brightness and to reduce computational
complexity. The goal is to produce effective contrast in images and video with higher quality
than the previous state of the art methods. The simulation tools used for this research modules
is MATLAB.
Keyword: Image enhancement, Quality, Gamma correction algorithm, CVC method,
AGCWD method, Mat lab.

1. INTRODUCTION
Image enhancement operations improve the qualities of an image like improving the
image contrast and brightness characteristics by reducing its noise content and sharpen the
details. Image enhancement method enhances the image and reveals the same information in
more understandable image form. It doesn’t add any information to it. The contrast
enhancement plays an important role in the improvement of visual quality of digital images
and videos. Contrast is the difference in luminance in visual perception of the real world, the
contrast is determined by the difference in the color and brightness of the object view in the
same field. The image/ video contrast are second-hand in different situations. Here,
luminance contrast is used and the Gamma correction techniques make up a family of general
HM technique obtained simply by using a varying adaptive parameter γ. Gamma correction
technique is used to code and decode luminance values in video and image systems.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, the Identification of
problems formulation related to the existing methods. Section 3 presents detailed description
of proposed algorithms for solving the networks issue. Experiment results and discussions are
described in Section 4. Finally, the conclusion and further enhanced are given in Section 5.

2. PROBLEM IDENDIFICATION
The CVC method enhances the contrast of the input images using inter pixel
contextual information. Here the algorithm uses 2D histogram of the input image using the
mutual relationship between neighborhood pixels. A smooth 2D histogram is obtained by
minimizing sum of frobeius. Histogram is uniformly distributed in the enhancement for
achieving the mapping. Convex optimization is used in flattest histogram specification. The
contextual and variation contrast method is used to improve the visual quality of the dimmed
input images. The contextual and variation contrast method is used to improve the visual
quality of the dimmed input image. Contrast enhancement is used to increase the contrast of
an image with low dynamic range or to bring images details that would be hidden.
Image with low contrast are improved in terms of an increase in dynamic ranges with
sufficiently high contrast are also improved but not as much. The color quality are improved
in terms of color consistency, higher contrast between foreground and background object.
Several review of the literature on image contrast enhancement have been published, from a
variety of different view point. In automatic image equalization and contrast enhancement
using Gaussian mixture modeling having the limitations of computationally complex,
Undesired effect of over emphasizing and result in harshy and noisy appearance of output
image. In efficient contrast enhancement using adaptive gamma correction and cumulative
intensity distribution having the limitations of the quantitative evaluation of image
enhancement is very difficult to measure and then the CDF curve of the dimmed images will
be distorted due to environment. In FSIM, A feature similarity index for image quality
assessment having the limitation of the HVS perceives an image mainly based on its salient
low level features only.
In Rendering distortion assessment of image quality degraded by tone having the
limitation of Computationally complex. The image quality analysis of a novel histogram
equalization method for image contrast enhancement having the imitations of It posses spikes
which compress other gray levels for distribution and the contrast was still insufficient even
after contrast enhancement and then the various HM methods all significantly improved the
dark region with the exceptions of AWMHE. Such existing system having more number of
limitations such as computational cost is high, complex method, time complexity, some
histogram techniques lose the statistical information, computational complexity in using
video sequence enhancement, doesn’t preserve a sufficient level of the brightness in the
original image.

3. PROBLEM SOLUTION
3.1 Introduction about the Proposed Methods
Histogram modification (HM) technique is used in the proposed system. It is the most
popular indirect enhancement technique due to their easy and fast implementation. A hybrid
HM method is proposed to accomplish this goal by efficiently combining the TGC and THE
methods. The various HM methods all significantly improved the dark region with the
exceptions of RSWHE and AWMHE, which both preserved the low level of brightness as a
poor enhancement. For image contrast enhancement, these methods were applied to enhance
various gray scale and color images. The proposed Adaptive Gamma Correction (AGC) is
used for maintaining the intensity levels of an image. The AGC method can progressively
increase the low intensity and avoid the significant decrement of the high intensity.
Normalized gamma function to modify the transformation curve without losing the available
histogram of statistics. The gamma parameter generates a more significant adjustment.
The Weighting Distribution (WD) function is also applied to slightly modify the
statistical histogram. In RSWHE method, a normalized gamma function can be used to
modify each sub-histogram to include multi-equalizations with brightness preservation. For
the brightness preservation, the modified Absolute Mean Brightness Error (AMBE) is
employed to assess the intensity of the enhanced image. TB method can significantly reduce
the processing time, with simplification dependent on the temporal similarity of the
sequences.
 Our main concept is divided into following steps. the step 1 is the load the image, the
step 2 is the enhance the gray scale image, the step 3 is the resize images and finally the step
4 is the enhance color images

3.2 BLOCK DIAGRAM

Figure. 1 Block Diagram of AGCWD Method for image

3.2.2 Block Description

Figure. 1 shows the block diagram of dimmed images. The dimmed image used as
input, most of the pixels are densely distributed in the low level region. Based on the
weighting distribution function, the fluctuant phenomenon can be smoothed, thus reducing
the over-enhancement of the gamma correction. Our proposed AGCWD method can enhance
a color image without generating artifacts or distorting the color.

3.2.2.1 Histogram Analysis

A hybrid HM method is efficiently combining the TGC and THE methods. A
normalized gamma function modify each sub-histogram Gamma correction techniques make
up a family of general HM techniques obtained simply by using a varying adaptive
parameter. The transform-based Gamma Correction (TGC) is used to enhance the maximum
intensity of the input image. Using the fixed parameter the contrast is modified by gamma
correction in different level intensity images. Probability density of each intensity level is
calculated with respect to the number pixels in the images. Apply the cumulative distribution
function is based on probability distribution function of the image.

3.2.2.2 Weighting Distribution

The Weighting Distribution (WD) function is also applied to slightly modify the
statistical histogram. The WD function is applied based upon the adjusted parameter. The
probability density function of statistical histogram is calculated. The HSV color model,
which can decouple the achromatic and chromatic information of the original image.
 The WD function is expressed in below Eq.(4.1),

……………(4.1)

where α is the adjusted parameter, pdfmax is the maximum pdf of the statistical histogram
and pdfmin is the minimum pdf. Based on Equation of WD function, the modified cdf is
given in Eq.(4.2),

….…………(4.2)

where the sum of pdfw is calculated and is given in Eq.(4.3),

……………(4.3)

Finally, the gamma parameter based on cdf Eq. of AGC Gamma Correction is modified
which is given in Eq.(4.4),
…………….(4.4)
In the HSV color model, the hue (H) and the saturation (S) can be used to represent the color
content, with the value (V) representing the luminance intensity. The color image can be
enhanced by preserving H and S while enhancing only V.

3.2.2.3 Gamma Correction

Apply gamma correction based upon the gamma parameter in cumulative distribution
function. In the HSV color model, the hue and the saturation can be used to represent the
color content, with the value representing the luminance intensity. Then apply smoothening
function for reducing the over-enhancement of the gamma correction.
The proposed adaptive gamma correction (AGC) is formulated which is given in Eq.(4.5),

……………..(4.5)

The AGC method can progressively increase the low intensity and avoid the significant
decrement of the high intensity.

3.3 Color Space Selection

There is several color spaces used internationally. Each of those color spaces were
designed for certain application and based on certain considerations.
3.3.1 RGB Color Space
RGB color space is the most common one used for images on computer because the
computer display is using the combination of the primary colors(red, green, blue)to display
any perceived color. Each pixel in the screen is composed of three points which is stimulated
by red, green and blue electron gun separately. However, RGB space does not correspond to
color dissimilarity in perception. Therefore we prefer to transform image data in RGB color
space to other perceptual uniform space before feature extraction in Table 1 and Table 2.

Table. 1 Primary and secondary colors

Block Type R G B
Blue 56 61 150
Green 70 148 73
 Red 175 54 60
Yellow 231 199 31
Magenta 187 86 149
Cyan 8 133 161
Table. 2 Natural color
Block Type R G B
Dark skin 115 82 68
Light skin 194 150 130
Blue sky 98 122 157
Foliage 87 108 67
Blue flowers 133 128 177
Bluish green 103 189 170

3.3.2 HSV Color Model

The HSV stands for Hue, Saturation and Value based on the artists (Tint, Shade, Tone)
the coordinate system in a hexagon in Figure 4.4. And Figure 4.5 is a view of the HSV color
model. The Value represents intensity of a color, which is decoupled from the color
information in the represented image. The hue and saturation components are intimately
related to the way that human eye perceives color resulting in image processing algorithms
with physiological basis.

3.4 Color Conversion

In order to use a good color space for a specific application, color conversion is
needed between color spaces. The good color space for image enhancement system should
preserve color differences. In other words, the numerical Euclidean should approximate the
human perceived difference.
3.4.1 RGB to Gray Scale Conversion
Color image which comprise of combination the Red, Green, Blue color. So, in image
enhancement the intensity of color have to be analyzed. It is hard to achieve intensity of
color image at specific pixel as it comprise of combination of Red, Green, Blue color. In
Gray scale image intensity of image range from minimum of ‘0’ as weak gradient to a
maximum of ‘255’ as strong gradient. Therefore there is a need to convert RGB to Gray scale
image.

3.4.2 Histogram Equalization on Image

The histogram equalization on a gray scale image is used on color images by applying
the same method separately to the Red, Green and Blue components of the RGB color values
of the image.

3.4.3 Histogram Modification

Many image processing operations result in changes to the image's histogram. The
class of histogram modifications which we consider here includes operations where the
changes in pixel levels are computed so as to change the histogram in a particular way.

3.5 Advantages of Proposed Method

 Brightness preservation.
 Over-enhancement and under-enhancement.
 Avoid the significant decrement of the high intensity.
 Reduce the computational time.
 Smoothening function is used to reduce over enhancement process gamma correction.
  Video-contrast enhancement is also provided.
 Over-enhancement and under-enhancement.
 Computational cost is low.

4. RESULT AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Simulated Output for Existing System -CVC Method

Figure. 2 Input -Dimmed image of CVC method

Figure. 2 shows dimmed image which is given us input to the CVC. Images with low
contrast are improved in terms of an increase in dynamic range. Images with sufficiently high
contrast are also improved but not as much. Secondly, the dimmed color image is converted
into gray scale image which is shown in Figure. 3. The enhancement process is based on the
observation that contrast can be improved by increasing the gray-level differences between
the pixels of an input image and their neighbors. Thirdly, histogram is obtained for gray scale
image which is shown in Figure. 4. In the histogram, for each gray level in the input image,
the distribution of other gray levels in the neighborhood of the corresponding pixel is
computed.
Figure. 5 shows the workspace output for dimmed gray scale image. The workspace
describes the minimum and maximum pixel value of gray scale image. Figure. 6 shows the
enhanced CVC image which is obtained from gray scale image. The contrast enhancement is
achieved by mapping the diagonal elements of the input histogram. Then the enhanced CVC
image is equalized to get the histogram equalized image of CVC which is shown in Figure.7.
For the purpose of image equalization, gray-level differences should be equally distributed
over the entire input image. To realize these observations, the histogram of the input image is
constructed and modified with a priori probability, which assigns higher probability to the
high gray-level differences and vice versa. Then from the histogram equalized image, the
statistical histogram plot is obtained which is shown in the Figure. 8.
Figure. 3 Gray scale image

Figure. 4 Histogram of input image

Figure. 5 Workspace for input Histogram

Figure. 6 Enhanced CVC image

Figure. 7 Histogram equalization of CVC

Figure. 8 Output histogram of CVC

4.2 PROPOSED SYSTEM -AGCWD
For the proposed system-AGCWD, the input image is get as dimmed color images
which is shown in Figure. 9. For the dimmed image used as input, most of the pixels are
densely distributed in the low-level region. The AGC method can progressively increase the
low intensity and avoid the significant decrement of the high intensity of input image. Figure.
10 shows the gray scale image which is obtained from the color image. To display the image,
using a gray scale color map with 256 values. This avoids the need to scale the data-to-color
mapping, which is required if we use a color map of a different size. For the obtained gray
scale image, the histogram is plotted which is shown in Figure. 11. An image histogram is a
chart that shows the distribution of intensities in an gray scale image.
Figure. 12 shows the input image for gamma correction in AGCWD, after obtaining
the histogram for the input image. The weighting distribution (WD) function is applied to
slightly modify the statistical histogram and then the gamma correction is applied . Then the
enhanced image is obtained which is shown in Figure. 13. Figure. 14 shows the enhanced
image of AGCWD method. Thus the input image is enhanced without generating artifacts or
distorting the color. For the enhanced output image, the histogram is plotted which is shown
in Figure. 15. The pixels distribution is obtained in the workspace for the enhanced output
image which is shown in Figure. 16.
4.2.1 Gray scale output

Figure. 9 Input -Dimmed image of AGCWD method

Figure. 10 Gray scale image

Figure. 11 Histogram of input image

Figure. 12 Input for gamma correction

Figure. 13 Enhanced image after gamma correction

Figure. 14 Enhanced image of AGCWD method

Figure. 15 Output histogram of AGCWD method

Figure. 16 Workspace for Output Histogram

4.2.2 Color Image Output

Figure. 17 Input dimmed color image

Figure. 18 Traditional histogram equalisation

Figure. 19 Weighting distribution with traditional histogram

Figure. 20 Enhanced color image
For the proposed system-AGCWD, the input image is get as dimmed color images
which is shown in Figure. 17. For the dimmed image used as input, most of the pixels are
densely distributed in the low-level region. The AGC method can progressively increase the
low intensity and avoid the significant decrement of the high intensity of input image. The
histogram equalization enhances the contrast of images by transforming the values in an
intensity image, or the values in the color map of an indexed image, so that the histogram of
the output image approximately matches a specified histogram. For dimmed color image
input, the traditional histogram equalization is obtained which is shown in Figure. 18.
Weighting distribution is performed to smoothen and also applied to slightly modify the
statistical histogram. the color image which is shown in Figure. 19. In Figure. 20 shows the
enhanced color image without generating artifacts or distorting the color. The input video is
converted into group of frames and each frame is enhanced and here some of the snap
shots are shown in Figure. 21 to Figure. 24.

4.2.3 Video Output

Figure. 21 Video snap shot 1

Figure. 22 Video snap shot 2

Figure. 23 Video snap shot 3

Figure. 24 Video snap shot 4

4.3 Comparison between CVC and AGCWD Method

4.3.1 Comparison Output 1
Figure. 25 Enhanced CVC image 1

Figure. 26 Enhanced AGCWD image 1

4.3.2 Comparison Output 2

Figure. 27 Enhanced CVC image 2

Figure. 28 Enhanced AGCWD image

4.3.3 Comparison Output 3

Figure. 29 Enhanced CVC image 3

Figure. 30 Enhanced AGCWD image 3

4.4 Comparison Table for Enhanced Images

Table. 3 Comparison Table -CVC and AGCWD

Workspace For Input Image - CVC and AGCWD

Workspace For Enhanced Images - CVC and AGCWD

CVC AGCWD
In Table. 3 shows the comparison table of CVC and AGCWD method. In this
workspace, the pixel value in row 116 and column 156 is considered. The pixel value shows
that the Enhanced gray image of AGCWD method is better than input gray image and CVC
method.

5. CONCLUSION & FUTURE ENHANCEMENT

In this modules, the image enhancement for both images and video sequences is
based on AGCWD method and TB method. The proposed method is composed of three major
steps. First, the histogram analysis provides the spatial information of a single image based
on probability and statistical inference. In the second step, the weighting distribution is used
to smooth the fluctuant phenomenon and thus avoid generation of unfavorable artifacts. In the
third and final step, gamma correction can automatically enhance the image contrast through
use of a smoothing curve. Furthermore, we employed temporal information to reduce the
computational time for several image frames of a video sequence. Based on the difference of
the information content, the entropy model was used to determine whether or not the
transformation curve should be updated.
While considering the future work, we use more features for contrast enhancement
in both image and video in real time applications.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported in part by Anna University Recognized Research Centre Lab
at Francis Xavier Engineering College, Tirunelveli, Tamilnadu, India. Also, we would like to
thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.

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 Dr. N. Muthukumaran was born in Kaniyakumari, Tamilnadu, India,
in 1984. He received the B.E (Electronics and Communication
Engineering) from Anna University, Chennai, India, in 2007 and the
M.E (Applied Electronics) from Anna University, Chennai, India, in
2010 and the Ph.D (Information and Communication Engineering)
Degree from Anna University, Chennai, India. He is currently
working as an Associate Professor in Electronics and Communication
Engineering Department & Research centre lab in Francis Xavier
Engineering College, Tirunelveli, Tamilnadu, India. His major
research interests are Image Processing/ Compression, Digital and
Analog Very Large-Scale Integration circuit design and Networks. He conducted several
projects in the area of Image processing, Image Compression, Very Large-Scale Integration
and Networks. Since 2008 he has published more than 26 journals in International and 57
National/International conferences papers.