International Journal of Automation and Computing

04(3), July 2007, 229-235 DOI: 10.1007/s11633-007-0229-7

Interactive Image Enhancement by Fuzzy Relaxation

Shang-Ming Zhou1,
2 3

John Q. Gan2

Li-Da Xu3

Robert John1

1 School of Computing, De Montfort University, Leicester LE1 9BH, UK Department of Computer Science, University of Essex, Colchester CO3 4SQ, UK Department of Information Technology and Decision Sciences, Old Dominion University, Norfolk VA23529-0218, USA

Abstract: In this paper, an interactive image enhancement (IIE) technique based on fuzzy relaxation is presented, which allows the user to select dierent intensity levels for enhancement and intermit the enhancement process according to his/her preference in applications. First, based on an analysis of the convergence of a fuzzy relaxation algorithm for image contrast enhancement, an improved version of this algorithm, which is called FuzzIIE Method 1, is suggested by deriving a relationship between the convergence regions and the parameters in the transformations dened in the algorithm. Then a method called FuzzIIE Method 2 is introduced by using a dierent fuzzy relaxation function, in which there is no need to re-select the parameter values for interactive image enhancement. Experimental results are presented demonstrating the enhancement capabilities of the proposed methods under dierent conditions. Keywords: Interactive image enhancement, fuzzy relaxation, fuzzy set, crossover point, convergence.

Introduction

Image based service systems have been widely applied to various social activities such as security-critical areas: banks, train stations, public transportation, power plants, etc., and computer aided medical diagnosis and intensive cares. The common characteristics of these applications are that human operator interactions are extensively involved and the system outputs are subjectively evaluated. Hence, interactive image processing techniques are highly demanded, in which interactive image enhancement (IIE) is a common user task. Image enhancement techniques selectively emphasize and inhibit certain information in an image so as to strengthen the usability of the image. Image enhancement does not increase the intrinsic information in the original image, but is benecial to further image applications, such as facilitating image segmentation, or enforcing the capability of human or machine recognition systems to recognize and interpret useful information in the image. IIE is the technique by which the nal result of image enhancement is obtained in terms of subjective human evaluation. Although modern image processing has been and is still being developed very well, only a few researchers have made eorts on IIE. The well known histogram equalization is not an IIE technique as it does not allow users to get involved in the enhancement process interactively and it generates only one result: an approximation to a uniform histogram no matter whether the user likes or not. Broadly speaking, two existing image enhancement schemes have the potentials of being used for interactively specifying gray level transformation by users. One is the histogram matching (or specication) technique, in which a user is able to specify particular histogram shapes that highlight certain gray-level ranges. Woods and Gonzalez introduced a programmable hardware system for interactively enhancing monocular and stereographic images at video rates based on histogram specications[1] . Yang proposed an interactive contrast enhancement method based on direct mapping between histograms[2] . The main difManuscript received date March 5, 2007; revised date May 17, 2007 *Corresponding author. E-mail address: smzhou@ieee.org

culty in applying the histogram specication method to IIE lies in the construction of a meaningful histogram. In practice, there are no rules for specifying histograms[3] . Alternatively, one can express the gray level transformation directly by a mathematical function with parameters chosen by the user so that an interactive enhancement mode can be implemented. Canas described an electronic hardware system capable of applying some nonlinear contrast stretches to the enhancement of video image in real time, rendering it useful as an interactive tool for the analysis and modication of image contrast on a statistical basis[4] . In order to provide an interactive contrast enhancement for global histogram modication of images, Grundland and Dodgson applied a piecewise rational quadratic interpolating spline to histogram warping[5] , and addressed the requirements of a transformation function T () used for IIE: the necessary degrees of freedom exist within T () with its parameters chosen by the user to express simultaneous and independent contrast enhancement at dierent points, where T () is continuously dierentiable and T () 0 preserving the natural order of gray levels. Many existing transformations for contrast enhancement fail to meet these requirements[5] . Koren suggested an interactive contrast enhancement method by applying a piecewise linear enhancement function to discrete steerable dyadic wavelet transform coecients[6] . In contrast, with the same motivation of introducing subjective human evaluation into computing process as in IIE, a new evolutionary computation technique, named interactive evolutionary computation (IEC), has emerged[7] and received much attention, in which human evaluation is conducted using tness values for system outputs. In [7], Takagi rst described the denition and the features of IEC and gave a good overview of the IEC research, which is also helpful to the understanding of IIE. Actually, some researchers have made eorts to implement IIE based on the IEC technique. In [8], Poli and Cagnoni suggested an approach to the interactive development of programs for image enhancement with genetic programming based on pseudo-color transformations. This paper focuses on fuzzy relaxation based IIE methods. The most important reason for introducing fuzzy

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set theory into this eld lies in that a grey tone picture possesses inherent vagueness and ambiguity due to variable lighting conditions of the object, the non-linearity of imaging systems, and the subjective evaluation of image quality by human beings. Fuzzy set theory provides a capability to characterize the uncertainty and imprecision and to incorporate human knowledge into problem-solving process[914] . Fuzzy relaxation is a suitable scheme that can be applied to IIE based on the operation of fuzzy membership functions. In this scheme, an image on spatial domain is usually transformed onto fuzzy domain by fuzzy membership functions; thus, an image can be considered as an array of fuzzy singletons[15,16] . In the image enhancement process using a fuzzy relaxation algorithm, pixel values will change through iterations, and the enhancement can be stopped exibly in terms of users evaluation of enhanced image quality. Li & Yang suggested a transformation function (called S-function) for the relaxation of image contrast enhancement[17] , in which dierent orders of S-function and dierent statistics are used to improve enhancement speed and quality. A useful feature of this Sfunction is its adjustable crossover point that can be used interactively to update the shape of the membership function. This same S-function has been further exploited in fuzzy entropy relaxation processes for image contrast enhancement by Cheng[1822] , in which both global and local information is considered to prevent over-enhancement and suppress noise, and the global information is provided by the histogram and local information based on the fuzzy entropy of local window fuzzied by S-function. However, Li & Yang s fuzzy relaxation approach is problematic, because the convergence proof of Case 2 in [17] about this S-function was accidentally neglected and a mathematical analysis shows that the convergence statement in [17] about the second transformation function S2 (a part of S-function) cannot be guaranteed[23] . As pointed out in [24], convergence is an important property of relaxation algorithms. In this paper, the convergence analysis of the transformation functions in [17] is briey introduced, and a method of selecting appropriate parameters to guarantee its convergence is proposed, which leads to an IIE method called FuzzIIE Method 1. In order to avoid the procedure of re-selecting the parameters during relaxation, an IIE method called FuzzIIE Method 2 is further developed by using a fuzzy transformation function with good property of convergence. From the IIE perspective, the proposed FuzzIIE Method 1 and FuzzIIE Method 2 provide interactive ways of selecting the level of intensity of pixels to be enhanced and exibly stopping the enhancement based on subjective human evaluation. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 briey reviews the fuzzy relaxation algorithm proposed in [17]. In section 3, the convergence of the fuzzy relaxation algorithm is analyzed, and FuzzIIE Method 1 is described, in which a way of choosing appropriate parameter values in the transformation function is presented to guarantee the expected convergence property in image enhancement. Section 4 addresses FuzzIIE Method 2 based on a fuzzy transformation function with good property of convergence for fuzzy relaxation. Experimental results are given in section 5, followed by conclusions in section 6.

2
2.1

Li and Yang s fuzzy relaxation algorithm

Image fuzzy domain

In order to apply fuzzy set theory, an image on spatial domain is usually transformed onto fuzzy domain by fuzzy membership functions. For an image X with a size of M N and L grey levels, the image on the fuzzy domain can be expressed by Xf = (xij , ij )|xij , i = 1, , M, j = 1, , N (1) where ij = (xij ) is the fuzzy membership degree of pixel grey level xij .

2.2

Li and Yang s fuzzy relaxation algorithm

As described in [17], the fuzzy membership function (x; a, b, c) used for contrast enhancement is dened by 8 > 0 if x a > > < (x; a, b, c) if a < x b 1 (x; a, b, c) = (2) > 2 (x; a, b, c) if b < x c > > : 1 if x > c where (x a)2 K1 (x c)2 2 (x; a, b, c) = 1 K2 K1 = (b a)(c a) 1 (x; a, b, c) = K2 = (c b)(c a) (3) (4) (5) (6)

and a, b, c [0, L] are free parameters. The image contrast enhancement is conducted by using the following transformation iteratively: (n) (n1) xij = c xij ; a, b, c , n = 1, 2, 3, (7) where n is the iteration index and xij = xij are the original pixel grey levels. The convergence property of the above iteration process is very important to the successful application of this algorithm. Some statements about the convergence of the algorithm were given in [17], but without full proof.
(0)

Interactive image enhancement based on the improved Li and Yang s algorithm

In [17], the convergence property of the transformation dened by (7) is described as follows: through the iter(n) ations, the transferred value xij for pixel xij (a, b] should approaches zero, while the transferred value for pixel xij (b, c] should be going to c, where b is called a crossover point. This can be analyzed in terms of two cases. Case 1. When the transformation is dened by the function (3), i.e., 1 (xij ; a, b, c) = (xij a)2 K1 (8)

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and

(n) xij

(n1) = c1 xij ; a, b, c , n = 1, 2, 3,

(9)

It is proved in [17] that the following relation holds xij < xij
(n) (n1)

From the constraint x > b > a, the following inequalities should hold g(a) = a2 2ca + cx > 0 (17) or a<c and or p c (c x ) (18) (19) (20)

i.e., the transferred value for pixel xij (a, b] becomes smaller and smaller through out the iterations. Case 2. When the transformation is dened by the function (4), i.e., 2 (xij ; a, b, c) = 1 and (xij c) K2
2

g(b) = b2 2cb + cx < 0 x > b > c p c (c x ).

(10)

Additionally, the minimum of function g(z) = z 2 2cz +cx is at z = c and gmin (c) = c (c x ) < 0. (21)

(n) (n1) xij = c2 xij ; a, b, c , n = 1, 2, 3,

(n)

(11)

It is claimed in [17] that the transferred value xij for pixel xij (b, c] becomes larger and larger through out the iterations. However this claim is not true. In order to clearly address our method of selecting appropriate parameters to guarantee the convergence of Li and Yangs algorithm, we briey analyze its convergence. (n) (n1) In order to prove xij > xij in Case 2, it is necessary to show the following inequality holds (without losing generality, let n=1) c or c (xij c)2 + K2 xij cK2 = (xij c) [c(xij c) + K2 ] < 0. (13) Let f (xij ) = (xij c) [c(xij c) + K2 ]. Obviously, there are two solutions for f (xij ) = 0, x = a + b ij ab , c x = c ij (14) c (xij c)2 xij > 0 K2 (12)

The ranges of appropriate values of parameters a and b given x and c can be illustrated in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

Bounds of parameters a and b for the given x and c

and the minimum of f (xij ) possesses the following property K2 f c < 0. (15) 2c ` Therefore, f (xij ) < 0 holds only ifxij x , x . It ij ij ` should be noted that b xij , x and b < x . For / ij ij (n1) (n) will xij (b, x ) we have f (xij ) > 0, thus xij > xij ij not hold in ` this region, i.e., the transferred value for pixel xij b, xij will become smaller and smaller rather than larger and larger. Thus the actual crossover point is x , ij but not the b. However, x is not an explicit parameter in ij the transformation function. In order to resolve this problem, a method for choosing the transformation parameters is developed in this paper. From (14), it is clear that the actual crossover point x ij depends on parameters a, b, and c. In image enhancement, the crossover point and c are usually determined by the histogram analysis of the image. As soon as the crossover point and c are determined in terms of user s preference, say, x = x and x < c L, (14) can be used to determine ij the appropriate values for parameters a and b. From (14) we have x a b= . (16) 1 a/c

Based on the above analysis, we propose the following procedure for determining the values of parameters a, b, and c for image contrast enhancement: Step 1. In terms of the following condition, determine the crossover point x and the value of c in terms of user s preference: x < c L. (22) Step 2. Choose the value of parameter a such that the following holds p 0 a < c c (c x ). (23) Step 3. Compute the value of parameter b according to (16). Parameters a, b, and c chosen by the above procedure for the transformation will guarantee the fuzzy relaxation algorithm to achieve the desired image enhancement eect, that is, with the iterations of image enhancement pixels with grey levels higher than the crossover point will be emphasized while those with grey levels lower than the crossover point will be inhibited. From the IIE perspective, it is easily proved that the transformation function (2) used in Li & Yang s algorithm meets the requirements of a transformation function for IIE as addressed in [5]. In the improved Li & Yang s algorithm, which is called FuzzIIE Method 1, parameters a, b, and c (two of them are free) provide exible ways of adjusting

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pixel intensities at dierent points for the users, and the completion of the iteration of image enhancement is based on the user s evaluation on the enhanced image. The next section introduces an IIE based on a dierent fuzzy transformation function with good property of convergence during relaxation of image enhancement.

point on the fuzzy domain during enhancement, correspondingly b is the crossover intensity level on the spatial domain ,

S1 (ij ; a , b ) = b S2 (ij ; b , c ) = c

Interactive image enhancement based on a dierent fuzzy relaxation function

ij a b a

2 (28) (29)

(c ij )2 . c b

In [23], a new fuzzy transformation function with good property of convergence during relaxation of image enhancement was proposed. In this section, we address how to use this fuzzy transformation function to implement IIE, leading to a method called FuzzIIE Method 2. In this algorithm, the image contrast enhancement is carried out on the fuzzy domain achieved by transforming grey levels of pixels in an image X into their membership grades in a fuzzy set Xf through a fuzzy membership function . After a contrast enhancement operation on the fuzzy set Xf , which is implemented by a transformation function T (), a new fuzzy set Yf is generated. The membership grades on Yf replace the ones on Xf in the next enhancement iteration process. The completion of these iterations is based on the user s evaluation on the enhanced image. The nal membership grades are then transformed back into grey levels of pixels on spatial domain by an appropriate transform , which produces a well-enhanced image. The following membership function is used to transform the pixels with grey levels belonging to [a , c) onto a fuzzy domain:
ij 1 1 = (xij ; a, c) = + sin 2 2

In case b = a, only S2 (ij ; b , c ) should be used, i.e. T (ij ) = S2 (ij ; b , c ) for all ij . Similarly, in case b = c, T (ij ) = S1 (ij ; a , b ) for all ij . It can be proved that, after a transformation by the T operator, the fuzzy membership degrees belonging to (b , c ) become larger, while the membership degrees belonging to (a , b )become smaller[23] . This will reduce the fuzziness of the fuzzy set Xf iteratively, leading to the expected image enhancement eect in image spatial domain. From the IIE perspective, the three free parameters a, b and c provide exible ways of adjusting the pixel intensities at dierent points for the users, and the completion of the iteration of image enhancement replies on the user s evaluation on the enhanced image, and the above transformation T () in (27) meets the requirements of a transformation function for the IIE as addressed in [5].

Experimental results

ca

xij

a+c 2

(24)

whilst a function , the inverse of , is used to transform membership grades on the fuzzy domain back to pixels on the image spatial domain,
ij = (zij ) = 1 (zij ; a, c) = a+c ca + arcsin (2zij 1) . 2 (25)

The contrast enhancement operation on a fuzzy set Xf to produce a new fuzzy set Yf is dened by zij = T (ij ), which is applied iteratively in the enhancement process as follows: (n) (n1) ij = T ij (26) where n is the iteration index, ij = ij is the membership grades of the original image pixels. The transformation function changes the membership grades iteratively, ( S1 (ij ; a , b ) if a < ij b (27) T (ij ) = S2 (ij ; b , c ) if b < ij c where a , b , and c are the corresponding membership grades of a, b, and c respectively, and b is the crossover
(0)

In this section, we present a number of image enhancement results under dierent conditions. Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 illustrate two low contrast grey tone images used in the experiments. Based on an analysis of histograms, as depicted in Fig. 2(b), for contrast enhancement it is expected that pixels with grey levels higher than 25 should be emphasized, and pixels with grey levels lower than 25 should be inhibited or kept unchanged so as to increase the image contrast. If parameters a, b and c are determined according to the principle of Li & Yang s original algorithm, for example, let a = 8, b = 25, and c = 255, the image enhancement eect is dicult to be achieved no matter how many iterations are performed because b = 25 is not the desired crossover point used in Li & Yang s original algorithm. Fig. 4 illustrates the enhanced image after 11 iterations by Li & Yang s original algorithm. By using FuzzIIE Method 1, we choose the actual crossover point x = 25. Let c = 255. Then parameter a is chosen as 8 according to (23) (0 < a < 13) and b =18 based on (16). Fig. 5 depicts the resulted image after 11 iterations, whilst Fig. 6 is the resulted image after 7 iterations. According to the traditional sense of evaluation on image enhancement, the enhanced image in Fig. 5 is better than the one in Fig. 6. However, in IIE it is the user who can choose which enhanced image is preferred. It can be seen that the enhanced image in Fig. 6 clearly shows the

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parameters a=4, b=25 and c=255, Fig. 7 illustrates the enhanced image after 11 iterations and Fig. 8 the enhanced image after 7 iterations. It can be seen that although both FuzzIIE Method 1 and FuzzIIE Method 2 can achieve similar results, more degrees of freedom in choosing parameters exist in FuzzIIE Method 2 than in FuzzIIE Method 1.

(a)

Fig. 4 The tool image enhanced by Li & Yang s algorithm after 11 iterations with a = 8, b = 25, c = 255

(b)

Fig. 2

Original tools image and its histogram

Fig. 5 The tools image enhanced by the FuzzIIE Method 1 with a = 8, b = 18, c = 255 after 11 iterations

(a)

Fig. 6 The tools image enhanced by the FuzzIIE Method 1 with a=8, b=18, c=255 after 7 iterations

(b)

Fig. 3

Original owers image and its histogram

shadows of the tools and reveals the light direction in the scene, very useful information for some vision applications, whilst there is no such sort of information revealed in the enhanced image in Fig. 5. By using FuzzIIE Method 2, with

Fig. 7 The image enhanced by the FuzzIIE Method 2 after 11 iterations with a = 4, b = 25, c = 255

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International Journal of Automation and Computing 04(3), July 2007

Fig. 8 The image enhanced by the FuzzIIE Method 2 after 7 iterations with a = 4, b = 25, c = 255

Similarly, according to an analysis of the histogram depicted in Fig. 3(b), it is expected that the lower image can be enhanced by emphasizing the pixels with grey levels higher than 61 or so and inhibiting the pixels with grey levels lower than 61 or so, that is to say, the crossover point of the fuzzy relaxation algorithm is 61 or so. Fig. 9 illustrates the corresponding enhanced result by the original Li & Yang s algorithm after 11 iterations. It can be seen that some useful details have been lost in the Li & Yang s relaxation process.

By using FuzzIIE Method 1, we choose the actual crossover point x = 61 and c=255. Parameter a is chosen as 22 according to (23) (0< a <32.58) and b is chosen as 42.68 based on (16). Fig. 10 illustrates the resulted image after 11 iterations of fuzzy relaxation. From the above results, it can be seen that the proposed method of selecting appropriate parameters for Li & Yang s fuzzy relaxation is eective. Anyway, after the user has chosen his/her favorite intensity levels for enhancement, it is a cumbersome task to re-select parameter values for a fuzzy relaxation. The difference between FuzzIIE Method 1 and FuzzIIE Method 2 is that the parameter values chosen by the user can be directly used in the fuzzy relaxation process in FuzzIIE Method 2. By using the parameter settings: a = 22, b = 61, c = 255, FuzzIIE Method 2 enhances the image as shown in Fig. 11 after 11 iterations.

Conclusions

This paper has proposed interactive image enhancement methods based on fuzzy relaxation technique, which allow users to select preferred intensity levels and intermit the enhancement process exibly. FuzzIIE Method 1 is proposed to guarantee the expected image enhancement eect in using Li & Yang s fuzzy relaxation function for image contrast enhancement. FuzzIIE Method 2 with a dierent fuzzy relaxation function is also introduced, in which there is no need to re-select the parameter values for interactive image enhancement. Experimental results have shown the validity of applying FuzzIIE Method 1 and FuzzIIE Method 2 to interactive image enhancement.

Fig. 9 The owers image enhanced by the original Li & Yangs algorithm after 11 iterations with a=22, b=61, c=255

References
[1] R. E. Woods, R. C. Gonzalez. Real-Time Digital Image Enhancement. Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 69, no. 5, pp. 643654, 1981. [2] X. D. Yang, Q. Xiao, H. Raafat. Direct Mapping between Histograms: An Improved Interactive Image Enhancement Method. In Proceedings of 1991 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, 13-16 October , vol. 1, pp. 243247, 1991. [3] R. C. Gonzalez, R. E. Woods, Digital Image Processing, 2nd ed., Prentice Hall, USA, 2002.

Fig. 10 The owers image enhanced by the FuzzIIE Method 1 after 11 iterations with a = 22, b = 42.68, c = 255

[4] A. A. D. Canas, Interactive Contrast Enhancement Using an Electronic Hardware System, Journal of Physics E: Scientic Instruments, vol. 17, no. 6, pp. 533538, 1984. [5] M. Grundland, N. A. Dodgson. Interactive Contrast Enhancement by Histogram Warping. In Proceedings of International Conference on Computer Vision and Graphics, series: Computational Imaging and Vision, Warsaw Poland, 22-24 September, vol. 32, pp. 832838, 2004. [6] I. Koren, A. Laine, F. Taylor, M. Lewis. Interactive Wavelet Processing and Techniques Applied to Digital Mammography. In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Atlanta, GA, USA, May, vol. 3, pp. 14151418, 1996.

Fig. 11 The image enhanced by the FuzzIIE Method 2 after 11 iterations with a = 22, b = 61, c = 255

[7] H. Takagi. Interactive evolutionary computation: fusion of the capabilities of EC optimization and human evaluation. Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 89, no. 9, pp. 12751296, 2001.

S. M. Zhou et al./ Interactive Image Enhancement by Fuzzy Relaxation [8] R. Poli, S. Cagnoni. Genetic Programming with UserDriven Selection: Experiments on the Evolution of Algorithms for Image Enhancement. In Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference on Genetic Programming, San Francisco, CA, pp. 269277, 1997. [9] F. Russo. An Image Enhancement Technique Based on the FIRE Operator. In Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, Washington, DC, Oct. 2326, vol. 1, pp. 155158, 1995. [10] F. Farbiz, M. B. Menhaj, S. A. Motamedi, M. T. Hagan, A New Fuzzy Logic Filter for Image Enhancement, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics-Part B, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 110119, 2000. [11] C. Y. Tyan, P. P. Wang, Image Processing-Enhancement, Filtering and Edge Detection Using The Fuzzy Logic Approach, In Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE Conference on Fuzzy Systems, San Francisco, USA, pp. 600605, 1993. [12] B. T. Chen, Y. S. Chen, W. H. Hsu. Automatic Histogram Specication Based on Fuzzy Set Operations for Image Enhancement. IEEE Signal Processing Letters, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 3740, 1995. [13] F. Russo. Recent Advances in Fuzzy Techniques for Image Enhancement. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, vol. 47, no. 6, pp. 14281434, 1998. [14] K. N. Plataniotis, D. Androutsos, A. N. Venetsanopoulos. Adaptive Fuzzy Systems for Multichannel Signal Processing. Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 87, no. 9, pp. 16011622, 1999. [15] L. A. Zadeh, K. S. Fu, K. Tanaka, M. Shimura. Fuzzy Sets and Their Applications to Cognitive and Decision Processes, Academic Press, New York, 1975. [16] S. K. Pal, R. A. King. Image Enhancement Using Smoothing with Fuzzy Sets. IEEE Transactions on System, Man, and Cybernetics, vol. 11, no. 7, pp. 494501, 1981. [17] H. Li, H. S. Yang. Fast and Reliable Image Enhancement Using Fuzzy Relaxation Technique. IEEE Transactions on System, Man, and Cybernetics, vol. 19, no. 5, pp. 1276 1281, 1989. [18] H. D. Cheng, H. Xu. A Novel Fuzzy Logic Approach to Mammogram Contrast Enhancement. Information Sciences, vol. 148, no. 14, pp. 167184, 2002. [19] H. D. Cheng, H. Xu. A Novel Fuzzy Logic Approach to Contrast Enhancement, Pattern Recognition, vol. 33, no. 5, pp. 809819, 2000. [20] H. D. Cheng, J. Li. Fuzzy Homogeneity and Scale-Space Approach to Color Image Segmentation, Pattern Recognition, vol. 36, no. 7, pp. 15451562, 2003. [21] H. D. Cheng, J. R. Chen. Automatically Determine the Membership Function Based on the Maximum Entropy Principle, Information Sciences, vol. 96, no.34, pp. 163 182, 1997. [22] H. D. Cheng, Y. H. Chen, Y. Sun. A Novel Fuzzy Entropy Approach to Image Enhancement and Thresholding. Signal Processing, vol. 75, no.3, pp. 277301, 1999. [23] S. M. Zhou, J. Q. Gan. A New Fuzzy Relaxation Algorithm for Image Enhancement. International Journal of Knowledge-based and Intelligent Engineering Systems, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 181192, 2006. [24] M. Sonka, V. Hlavac, R. Boyle. Image Processing, Analysis, and Machine Vision, Brooks/COLE, Thomson Asia Pte Led, Pacic Grove, CA , USA, 1999.

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Shang-Ming Zhou is a research fellow with Centre for Computational Intelligence, School of Computing, De Montfort University in the UK. His research interests include fuzzy logic systems (type1 and type-2) and applications, decision support systems under uncertainty environments, model interpretability and transparency in data-driven neurofuzzy systems, kernel machine learning (inc support vector machines) with fuzzy computing, articial neural networks and pattern recognition, intelligent signal and image processing. He has published extensively in these areas.

John Q. Gan received the B.Sc. degree in electronic engineering from Northwestern Polytechnic University, China, in 1982, the M.Eng. degree in automatic control and the Ph.D. degree in biomedical electronics from Southeast University, China, in 1985 and 1991, respectively. He is a reader in Computer Science at the University of Essex, UK. Dr. Gan has co-authored a book and published over 100 research papers. His research interests include neurofuzzy computation and machine intelligence, pattern recognition, signal processing, data fusion, brain-computer interfaces, robotics, and intelligent systems. Li-Da Xu is a professor of Information Technology at Old Dominion University, USA. He serves as the Chair of IFIP TC8.9 and IEEE SMC Technical Committee on Enterprise Information Systems. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Enterprise Information Systems, Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions SMC - Part C and IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics. He also is the regional editor of Expert Systems, and Editorial Board member of Systems Research and Behavioral Science. Dr. Xu is the author of more than 100 papers. His research interests include enterprise information systems, intelligent system, and decision support systems.

Robert John received the B.Sc. (Hons.) degree in mathematics from Leicester Polytechnic, Leicester, U.K., the M.Sc. degree in statistics from UMIST, Manchester, U.K., and the Ph.D. degree in type-2 fuzzy logic De Montfort University, Leicester, U.K., in 1979, 1981, and 2000, respectively. Currently, he is a professor and the director of the Centre for Computational Intelligence at De Montfort University. Prof. John is a Member of the Editorial Board of International Journal of Cognitive Neurodynamics, International Journal of Computational Intelligence, International Journal for Computational Intelligence and Information and Systems Sciences. He is a vice-chairman of the Fuzzy Technical Committee (FTC) of the IEEE Neural Networks, and a Member of EPSRC College in the UK. He is a co-general chair of the FUZZ-IEEE conference in London in 24-26 July, 2007. He has published extensively in the area of type-2 fuzzy logic and his research interests include the general eld of modelling human decision making using type-2 fuzzy logic.