Signal Processing: Image Communication 103 (2022) 116657

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Signal Processing: Image Communication

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/image

A contrast enhancement framework under uncontrolled environments based

on just noticeable difference✩
Yan Chai Hum a ,∗, Yee Kai Tee a , Wun-She Yap b , Hamam Mokayed c , Tian Swee Tan d ,
Maheza Irna Mohamad Salim e , Khin Wee Lai f
a
Department of Mechatronics and Biomedical Engineering, Lee Kong Chian Faculty of Engineering and Science, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia
b
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Lee Kong Chian Faculty of Engineering and Science, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia
c Department of Computer Science, Electrical and Space Engineering, Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden
d BioInspired Device and Tissue Engineering Research Group, School of Biomedical Engineering and Health Sciences, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Teknologi

Malaysia, 81300 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia

e
Diagnostic Research Group, School of Biomedical Engineering and Health Sciences, School of Biomedical Engineering and Health Sciences, Faculty of Engineering,
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81300 Skudai, Johor, Malaysia
f
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Universiti Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Image contrast enhancement refers to an operation of remapping the pixels’ values of an image to emphasize
Contrast enhancement desired information in the image. In this work, we propose a novel pixel-based (local) contrast enhancement
Image enhancement algorithm, based on the human visual perception. First, we make an observation that pixels with lower regional
Histogram equalization
contrast should be amplified for the purpose of enhancing the contrast and pixels with higher regional contrast
should be suppressed to avoid undesired over-enhancement. To determine the quality of the regional contrast
in the image (either lower or higher), a reference image will be created using a proposed global based contrast
enhancement method (termed as Mean Brightness Bidirectional Histogram Equalization in the paper) for fast
computation reason. To quantify the abovementioned regional contrast, we propose a method based on human
visual perception taking Just Noticeable Difference (JND) into account. In short, our proposed algorithm is able
to limit the enhancement of well-contrasted regions and enhance the poor contrast regions in an image. Both
objective quality and subjective quality experimental results suggested that the proposed algorithm enhances
images consistently across images with different dynamic range. We conclude that the proposed algorithm
exhibits excellent consistency in producing satisfactory result for different type of images. It is important to
note that the algorithm can be directly implemented in color space and not limited only to grayscale. The
proposed algorithm can be obtained from the following GitHub link: https://github.com/UTARSL1/CHE.

1. Introduction
Image, as a medium to convey information, is applied to serve
various purposes in daily life [1]. For example, X-ray images are
utilized to supply doctors the information about body conditions of a
patients [2]. CCTV captured images are analyzed for security purposes
such as finding suspects of crimes [3]. In another hand, artistic camera
captured photos are utilized to provide visual satisfaction for entertain-
ment purposes, such as wallpapers of computers, travel photos, and
wedding photos [4].
Image processing algorithms are adopted to augment automatic
image editing processes in enhancing the image quality [5]. Image
quality is not universal for all applications, depending on the purpose
of the image is assessed for, the quality desired varies for different
applications [6]. For example, image quality is crucial for X-ray or
CCTV, while for entertainment purpose, naturality is a more impor-
tant quality required from an image; hence, blurring of the photo
occasionally produces better quality [7]. Despite being adopted for
aesthetic reasons as well, automatic image processing algorithms are
mostly applied for automatic system such as intelligent vision system
of factories, object recognition, classification, automated vehicles and
face recognition system.
Contrast enhancement (CE) is often used to emphasize objects from
background to make different objects in an image more distinguishable.
When an image is too dark, having glaze, uneven illumination and
reflections, objects may saturate into background and some important
features can hardly be observed by human visual system. Therefore,

✩ This work was supported by the UTAR Research Fund (IPSR/RMC/UTARRF/2020-C1/H02).

∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: humyc@utar.edu.my (Y.C. Hum).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.image.2022.116657
Received 26 October 2021; Received in revised form 29 December 2021; Accepted 27 January 2022
Available online 2 February 2022
0923-5965/© 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Y.C. Hum, Y.K. Tee, W.-S. Yap et al.
Fig. 1. Examples of different types of images (a) Cameraman image with normal
brightness, (b) Kids’ image with large scale of darkness, (c) Forest image with extreme
light exposure.
CE algorithm appears as a conducive tool to detect the unobservable
features and reveal the hidden information in an image.
A substantial number of CE algorithms with different strengths
and limitations have been developed to fulfill the needs of different
applications. However, most of the algorithms perform well for only
specific types of images. In this article, a CE algorithm is proposed,
not specified to maximize performance on certain types of images
but to produce consistent result across different types of images with
reasonably satisfactory contrast in human’s perception.
2. Importance of the study
Human or manual CE using software only works if the user notices
and realizes that there exist certain important features hidden in the
low contrast area of the image. However, human eyes can detect only
contrast that exceeds certain gray level difference. For important ap-
plications such as X-ray and MRI (medical purposes), even the smallest
contrast unnoticeable by human eye might affect the judgment of
doctors [8].
Image is just a representation of a huge set of combination of
pixel values in computer software. Some existing CE algorithms are
suitable only for certain type of images and applications. In contrast
to images that are taken in controlled environment which offer similar
appearances, photos taken for application such as case investigation
inevitably confront with enormous possibilities and uncertainties. Fig. 1
demonstrates that images might exist under different light exposure.
Therefore, it is important to develop a CE algorithm that produces con-
sistent and promising result across images with various illuminations
conditions.
3. Contributions
The main contributions of this research work are
summarized as follows:
(1) We propose a perpetual contrast enhancement framework con-
sisted of 4 modules: (i) MBBDHE, (ii) Reference Enhancement,
(iii) Regional Contrast Information Acquisition, and (iv) Bright-
ness Readjustment. The overview of the relationship among
these modules can be found in the flowchart of Fig. 13.
(2) We propose a novel bi-histogram equalization method named as
Mean Brightness Bidirectional histogram equalization (MBB-
DHE). This method performs bi-histogram equalization by ad-
justing brightness based on just-noticeable-difference (JND) of
Human Visual System (HVS). The highlight of this proposed
bi-histogram equalization method is the introduction of the bidi-
rectional enhancement scheme. MBBDHE acts as the underlying
contrast enhancement method of the entire framework of our
proposed algorithm. We give details about this in Section 6.1.
2
Signal Processing: Image Communication 103 (2022) 116657
(3) We propose a scheme to regulate the contrast enhancement re-
sulted from MBBDHE by gauging the regional contrast that
depends on the just-noticeable-difference (JND). The contrast of
each region within the image will be adjusted according to the
reference enhancement derived by MBBDHE weighted using the
regional contrast. We give details about this in Section 6.2.
(4) We propose a novel scheme of categorization of images in order to
evaluate the performance of different HE algorithms on images
from different categories.
4. Previous works
In grayscale image, combinations of different intensity values of
the pixels reveal information about both the shape and brightness of
objects in the image. Under the premise, most image CE algorithms
intend to remap gray levels of an image with minimal distortion to
the shape. Most existing image CE methods utilize histogram of gray
levels or neighboring context of pixels as input to manipulate their
gray level remapping. In this paper, the reviewed image CE methods
are categorized into global and pixel-wise gray level remapping based
on their remapping operations instead of the inputs they considered.
4.1. Global gray level remapping
Global gray level remapping methods remap all pixels in the entire
image that contain the same intensity value to a new value. Image CE
algorithms in this category processes pixels with the same gray level as
a whole, regardless of the differences in spatial context between every
pixel. These methods adopt input histogram or sometimes neighboring
context of the entire gray level to assess the appropriate amount of
intensity remapping. The global gray level remapping methods, theo-
retically, maintain the shapes of objects in the input image since same
gray level are remapped together to another level without changing
their positions in the image.
Generally, this paradigm of CE expands the dynamic range of high
frequency gray levels by narrowing the dynamic range of low frequency
gray levels. Therefore, different low frequency gray levels might be
remapped to the same gray levels to provide larger dynamic range
to increase the contrast of high frequency gray levels leading to sat-
uration effect of small objects in low contrast region given that the
frequencies of their gray levels are low. Besides, if two separate objects
with the same gray level but opposite tone of background (bright
or dark background), enhancing contrast of one object will lead to
saturation of another object into the background. This method retains
the relationships between gray levels.
Most examples of global gray level remapping algorithm were devel-
oped based on the idea of histogram equalization (HE), such as Global
Histogram Equalization (GHE) [9], Brightness-preserving Bilinear His-
togram Equalization (BBHE) [10] (variations of BBHE: Dualistic Sub-
Image Histogram Equalization (DSIHE) [11], Minimum Mean Bright-
ness Error Bi-Histogram Equalization (MMBEBHE) [12], Recursive
Mean Separate Histogram Equalization (RMSHE) [13]), Dynamic His-
togram Equalization (DHE) [14], Two-dimensional Histogram Equal-
ization (2DHE) [15], Histogram Modification Framework (HMF) [16],
and Weighted Threshold Histogram Equalization (WTHE) [17], Con-
textual and Variational Contrast Enhancement(CVC) [18], Gray Level
Grouping (GLG) [19], Multipurpose Beta Optimized Bi-HE MBOBHE.
(MBOBHE) [20].
4.2. Pixel-wise gray level remapping
In contrast with global gray level remapping CE, pixel-wise gray
level remapping CE remaps intensity values pixel by pixel. In this case,
Y.C. Hum, Y.K. Tee, W.-S. Yap et al.
objects with the same gray level in an image might be remapped into
different gray levels using pixel-wise gray level remapping. However,
input histogram alone provides insufficient information to differen-
tiate pixels with the same intensity. Therefore, in pixel-wise gray
level remapping CE, additional information regarding the specific pixel
is required. In grayscale image, both the position of pixels and the
corresponding neighboring content supplies additional dimension of
information (other than intensity value).
For image contrast enhancement, only neighboring context provides
pertinent information to manipulate enhancement for a particular pixel.
Since the contrast level is represented by the gray level distance of an
object to its neighboring background, hence position of an object in an
image carries no information about the contrast level. Pixel-wise gray
level remapping methods hold the potential to enhance contrast of an
image with minimal saturation effect. Since contrast is determined by
gray level distance between neighboring objects, enhancing intensity
differences between pixels based on local context actually serves the
original purpose of CE better. In fact, pixel-wise gray level remapping
should reveal maximum number of hidden features in the image with
minimal saturation effect. However, pixel-wise gray level remapping
requires windowing operations resulting in significant reduction in
computational speed. Furthermore, adaptive image processing often
neglects the consistency of the overall visual effect on the image
resulting in undesired distortion or artifacts to the image such as
halo effect or checker box effect. Stated below are classic examples of
pixel-wise gray level remapping methods: Adaptive Histogram Equal-
ization (AHE) [21], Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization
(CLAHE) [22] and Exact Histogram Specification [23].
Most of the global gray level remapping method or even pixel-
based gray level remapping method suffers from being inconsistent in
enhancing contrast of different type of images; the algorithm usually
performs well only in certain ranges of images. We therefore would like
to propose a consistent contrast enhancement method that performs
reasonably well even under uncontrolled environment.
4.3. Existing HVS-based contrast enhancement methods
Most of the HVS-based contrast enhancement techniques [4,5,24]
in the literatures apply unique design of the algorithm attributable to
the fact that the term ‘‘HVS’’ does not indicate any specific technique.
The terms ‘‘HVS-based contrast enhancement algorithm’’ generally de-
scribe a certain category of techniques that exhibit characteristic that
mimics human visual system: either the designed technique models
the working principle of human visual system or the resultant image
aligns with human visual perception. In our case, we apply JND that
reflects the HVS in perceiving contrast to automatically adjust the
weight of enhanced contrast in different regions of the image depending
on the regional contrast such that regions of low regional contrast
require more enhancement and vice versa. In this section, we discuss
the core techniques designed by several recent HVS–based contrast
enhancement techniques.
S. Keerativittayanun et al. [7] addressed over-enhancement prob-
lem in images with less-visible and nicely-visible regions. They de-
signed a method that applies singular value decomposition (SVD) to
decompose an image in order to detect image noises, the denoised
image then will undergo an adaptive non-linear scaling function to
strengthen less-visible regions. Eventually, a pyramid-based blending
method is proposed to recover nicely visible regions in order to over-
come the over-enhancement problem. The introduction of an adaptive
non-scaling function highlighted this work. The authors claimed that
the resultant images align with the human visual perception by estab-
lishing a balance between tone preservation and detail preservation.
This function increases the pixel values of the less-visible regions by at
least the corresponding JND values to facilitate human perception.
Long Yu et al. [25] proposed a perceptually optimized enhancement
of contrast and color in images adopting JND transform and color
3
Signal Processing: Image Communication 103 (2022) 116657
Fig. 2. Human visibility threshold based on background luminance.
Source: Image from [28]
constancy. They utilized JND transform to acquire a JND map that
models the perceptual response of HVS. They implemented perceptual
Generalized Equalization Model (GEM) to control the image tone. By in-
tegrating perceptual GEM with JND transform, contrast enhancement,
color reproduction and detail enhancement in images without over-
enhancement was claimed to achieve. They proposed the use of color
constancy to predict the light source color in which the color constancy
is capable of estimating the scene illuminant and hence can adopt it
to generate canonical image from the color-biased image. First they
optimize both color and contrast using perceptual GEM. Next, a process
known as JND transform will generate a JND map using HVS response
model derived from the foreground and background luminance. Then,
Weber’s law updates JND map with the purpose to intensify perceptual
response. Lastly, inverse JND transform will be implemented from the
base image in which the JND map will generate the resultant image.
Liang Zhou et al. [26] proposed a contrast enhancement method
that is predicated on virtual viewing distance for data visualization
with color images. This enhancement is claimed to exhibit perceptual
characteristic such that the bands adjustments depend on the extracted
luminance channel of the input image in order to become visible at a
virtual viewing distance. The method can be considered as a threshold
model of spatial vision. Despite under different viewing conditions,
this model is capable to perform prediction of visibility of an object.
The core of this model is the computation of contrast and Contrast
Sensitivity Functions (CSF) believing that HVS entails visual pathways
in a band-pass fashion such that spatial vision can be modeled by
multiscale models.
5. Human visual system (HVS) on contrast
CE algorithms are frequently adopted as image preprocessing for
intelligent vision systems. Images with good contrast improve per-
formances of object detection and object classification. Besides that,
contrast enhancement algorithms can also be used directly to produce
clearer photos or videos. Therefore, the performances of intelligent
vision systems, enhanced photos or videos, are directly affected by feed-
back from humans, either users or developers that develop the systems.
Thus, understanding the ‘‘behavior’’ of HVS can produce system that
satisfy human visual system and hence serve human better.
HVS suffers from recognizing contrast between gray levels, de-
pending on situations; the minimum contrast difference noticeable
by human eyes differs; this minimum difference is known as JND.
Experiments was conducted [27] to show that visibility is reflected in
non-linearly to the background luminance; even at the same contrast
level, the perception of human eye in recognizing the visual difference
depends on many factors such as viewing distance and background
luminance.
Fig. 2 above shows that HVS perceives the smallest gray level
distance when the background luminance is around the middle of the
Y.C. Hum, Y.K. Tee, W.-S. Yap et al.
Fig. 3. Grayscale bar. An illustration that human perceives differently at dark and
bright zones.
dynamic range (from darkest to brightest = [0,255]). When background
luminance becomes too dark or bright, HVS faces difficulty in rec-
ognizing contrast difference (increment of visibility threshold). JND
is frequently introduced to improve performance of CE algorithm by
avoiding over-enhancement such as in the works of [7,29]. A formula
was adopted in [29] to characterize JND:
⎧ ( )0.5
⎪𝑇0 (1 − 𝑘 ) + 3 𝑓 𝑜𝑟 𝑥 ≤ 127
𝐽 𝑁𝐷 (𝑥) = ⎨ 127
⎪𝛾 (𝑘 − 127) + 3 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑤𝑖𝑠𝑒
⎩
The JND defined in (1) attempts to model the result from Fig. 2 where
𝑘 represents background luminance (or the reference gray level used to
estimate the regional contrast), and 𝑇0 and 𝛾 is the variable defined by
the viewing distance of the observer and the monitor. For experiment
of [28], the parameters were found to be 𝑇0 = 17; 𝛾 = 13∕128. In
another word, human eyes are excellent in deciphering intensities of
different gray tone but difficult to perceive contrast difference under
extremely dark or extremely bright condition.
The grayscale bar in Fig. 3 above is a concatenation of a series of
rectangles which are 5 gray levels to each other. It is easier for human
eyes to perceive the vertical straight lines at the interconnection of the
rectangles at the ‘‘gray zone’’ instead of the dark and bright zones.
Most photos and videos with poor contrast are due to bad lighting
(insufficient light source or over-exposure to light). Based on the JND
behavior of HVS, before applying any contrast enhancement, readjust-
ing the mean brightness of the photos or videos to medium brightness
(not too dark and not too bright) should improve the noticeable gray
level difference by HVS.
Considering CE of color image can be achieved by using grayscale
image CE on the V channel, CE only processes a 2D matrix of grayscale
image. Every pixel in a grayscale image only contains one value (which
is referred as gray level that represents brightness of the pixel). The
difference between two neighboring pixels’ values forms an edge point.
Combination of edge points forms contours. However, human eyes can
only perceive gray level differences above certain threshold. The edges
and contours unnoticeable by human eyes are hidden features that
require enhancements. The direction of gray level difference between
neighboring two pixels represents brightness relationship of these pix-
els. The brightness relationship carries information such as luminance
and lighting condition in the image, and 3D shapes of the actual object
in the image.
Enhancing contrast of an image involves modifying pixel values
of the grayscale image to magnify the gray level difference between
neighboring pixels that represent contour of an object in the image.
Consequently, the edges and contours are revealed. However, in order
to preserve the information carried by the image, the brightness rela-
tionship must be maintained; hence, pixels in an object, that do not
represent the contour, also need to be enhanced in accordance to the
contour pixels to preserve the shape and luminance of the object.
As shown in Fig. 4(b), the originally flat 2D shape in Fig. 4(a)
seems like a 3D object due to distorted brightness relationship between
pixels in the shapes. Fig. 4(d) shows that the football seems a little bit
flatter than the original image Fig. 4(c) although the appearances of the
objects are emphasized. As shown in Fig. 4(b), even the circle and tri-
angle become more obvious than Fig. 4(a), the brightness relationship
between center and edge of the shapes are not preserved, misleading
the observer to believe that the circle and triangle objects are originally
3D (not flat).
Signal Processing: Image Communication 103 (2022) 116657
Fig. 4. Effect of merely enhancing contour (a) Original image of custom image (b)
Contour enhanced custom image (c) Original football image (d) Contour enhanced
(1) football image.
Fig. 5. Gray level remapping without preserving brightness relationship between circle
and triangle (a) Original custom image (b) Image where circle and triangle have the
same brightness.
The challenge of CE is to emphasize objects from background while
preserving information carried by the image. In this sense, global gray
level remapping becomes handy. In global gray level remapping, pixels
with the same gray level are remapped simultaneously to a new gray
level. For example, if pixel A is brighter than pixel B in input image,
after global gray level remapping, pixel A is still brighter than pixel B,
but the gray level difference might change.
In global gray level remapping, increasing contrast by stretching
dynamic range of certain gray levels also suppresses dynamic range of
other gray levels. Despite mathematically, global gray level remapping
method such as GHE maintains the brightness relationship between
gray levels; however, since gray levels are discrete integers, saturation
effect might occur. Besides, reducing dynamic range of other gray
levels also means reducing contrast between those gray levels. Global
gray level remapping algorithm entails inevitable trade-off of contrast
between certain gray levels for enhancement of other gray levels,
therefore, further improvement of global gray level remapping becomes
an optimization task. In fact, only brightness relationship between
neighboring objects carries pertinent information about the shapes of
the objects. Objects that are separated far away from each other does
not affect the shape of the one another.
As shown in Fig. 5(b), the brightness relationship between triangle
and circle is no longer preserved, but the information about the shape
is maintained. Fig. 5(b) shows that when two objects are not adjacent
to each other, the brightness relationship between the objects does not
distort the shapes of the objects; hence, pixel-wise gray level remapping
comes into play. Pixel-wise gray level remapping as a local method, has
the potential to remap different gray levels to the same intensity, or
remap pixels with similar gray level to different intensities, based on
local context of the image. Pixel-wise gray level remapping algorithm
breaks the dynamic range limit of global gray level remapping algo-
rithm. However, changing brightness relationship between objects also
distorts the luminance information of the image. For example, using
local CE ‘‘scrambles’’ the luminance, the observer fails to determine the
direction of light source in the image.
In conclusion, for applications where luminance information is not
crucial, pixel-wise gray level remapping holds greater potential in detail
preservation.
4
Y.C. Hum, Y.K. Tee, W.-S. Yap et al.
Fig. 6. Visualization of effect of HE operation on histogram: illustrating that HE
operation enhances gray levels proportional to their frequency respectively where
𝑣𝑖 ∝ ℎ𝑖 . (a) Image histogram before HE operation (b) Image histogram after HE
operation.
6. Methodology
A contrast enhancement algorithm was proposed to remap the gray
levels of an input image based on regional contrast. In contrast with
2DHE, the proposed algorithm is a pixel-wise gray level remapping
method. Throughout this text, we shall frequently use the expres-
sion ‘‘proposed algorithm’’ and it refers to method we described in
Section 6.2.
The proposed algorithm enhances the contrast inversely propor-
tional to each pixel’s regional contrast level. In another word, pixel
with inferior regional contrast will be enhanced to a reference’s max-
imum limit; at the same time, the algorithm can also inhibit en-
hancement of pixel with good regional contrast to avoid unpleasant
over-enhancement. In order to achieve that, other than the weight of
enhancement, a reference that determines the ‘‘direction’’ on enhance-
ment is needed. The reference decides whether the pixel should be
remapped to a brighter or darker gray level in order to enhance the
contrast. In this case, HE based algorithm serves the best reference
due to two factors: low computation requirement, and tendency to
over-enhancement. To avoid washed-out effect by GHE, a modified
HE named mean brightness bidirectional histogram equalization (MBB-
DHE) is introduced in Section 6.1. The result of MBBDHE will act as
reference for the proposed regional contrast based weighted contrast
enhancement algorithm in Section 6.2. The proposed algorithm adjusts
the enhancement of the reference to restrain over-enhancement and
result in a more naturally looking, sufficiently enhanced image.
6.1. Mean Brightness Bidirectional Histogram Equalization (MBBDHE)
MBBDHE is a bi-histogram equalization method that utilize bright-
ness adjustment based on JND of HVS. We further augment the perfor-
mance by introducing a bidirectional enhancement scheme to reduce
potential washed-out effect. This algorithm is designed as a simplified
idea of bi-directional Switching Equalization [30].
In order to understand the meaning of ‘‘direction’’ referred in this
paper, the nature of HE operation needs to be discussed by referring
to Fig. 6. The operation of HE implies a preliminary assumption that:
the higher the frequency of a gray level, the more important the gray
level is. HE operation assumes gray levels with high frequencies forms
important information of the image, low frequency gray levels are
insignificant details. For example, let the input histogram has gray
{ }
levels 𝑋 = 𝑥1 , 𝑥2 , … , 𝑥𝑘 and will be remapped to gray levels 𝑌 =
{ }
𝑦1 , 𝑦2 , … , 𝑦𝑘 after HE. If gray level 𝑥𝑖 has high frequency, ℎ𝑖 , hence
the resultant 𝑦𝑖 will have its contrast enhanced away from its adjacent
gray level for gray level distance of 𝑣𝑖 , where 𝑣𝑖 is proportional to ℎ𝑖 .
However, both 𝑦𝑖−1 and 𝑦𝑖+1 can be regarded as adjacent gray levels of
𝑦𝑖 . Therefore, theoretically, 𝑦𝑖 can be enhanced away from 𝑦𝑖−1 (to be
brighter), or 𝑦𝑖+1 (to be darker) by amount of 𝑣𝑖 . In normal HE opera-
tion, gray levels are always enhanced away from their previous gray
5
Signal Processing: Image Communication 103 (2022) 116657
Fig. 7. MBBDHE Operation (a) Input histogram ⌈ (b)⌉ Output histogram. Regardless of
the value of 𝑥𝜇 , 𝑦𝜇 will always be shifted to 𝑘−1
2
= 128.
levels. Consequently, when enhancing gray level with low intensity
(dark) but high frequency, the gray level tends to become too bright,
resulting in reduced dynamic range for other brighter gray levels.
Let the probability distribution function of the input image be
𝑃 = {𝑃 (𝑖) |𝑖 = 1, 2, … , 𝑘} where 𝑃 (𝑖) represents probability of frequency
𝐻 (𝑖) of 𝑥𝑖 gray level. The cumulative distribution function, 𝐶 =
{𝐶 (𝑖) |𝑖 = 1, 2, … , 𝑘} of MBBDHE can be computed as shown in (2).
⎧0 𝑓 𝑜𝑟 𝑖 = 1
⎪ 𝑖−1
⎪∑ ∑
𝜇−1
⎪( 𝑃𝑥 )∕(2 𝑃𝑥 ) 𝑓 𝑜𝑟 𝑖 = 2, … , 𝜇
𝐶 (𝑖) = ⎨ 𝑥=1 𝑥=1 (2)
⎪ ∑ 𝑖 ∑𝑘
⎪( 𝑃𝑥 )∕(2 𝑃𝑥 ) + 0.5 𝑓 𝑜𝑟 𝑖 = 𝜇 + 1, 𝜇 + 2, … , 𝑘
⎪
⎩ 𝑥=𝜇+1 𝑥=𝜇+1
The 𝜇 in (2) represents the index of the mean gray level. Gray level 𝑥𝜇
is the input gray levels that represents the mean brightness of the input
image as defined in (3).
⌊ 𝑘 ⌋
∑
𝑥𝜇 = (𝑥 − 1)𝑃𝑥 (3)
𝑥=1
The remaining
{ operation
} is the same as GHE, where input gray levels
{ = 𝑥𝑖 |𝑖 = 1, 2, … , 𝑘 will be
𝑋 } remapped to output gray levels 𝑌 =
𝑦𝑖 = (𝑘 − 1) 𝐶(𝑖)|𝑖 = 1, 2, … , 𝑘 . In MBBDHE, 𝐶(1) will always be 0 as
∑0
𝑥=1 𝑃𝑥 = 0. The darkest existing gray level in the input image will
always be remapped to 0; while the brightest existing gray level will
always be remapped to the highest gray level (𝑘 − 1), in this paper,
(𝑘 − 1) = 255. The mean brightness, 𝑥𝜇 will be set to the middle of
the available dynamic range, 0.5(𝑘 − 1) as 𝐶 (𝜇) = 0.5. Consequently,
the overall brightness will be shifted to medium brightness as HVS can
recognize contrast difference best at medium background luminance as
discussed in Section 5. The operation of MBBDHE can be visualized as
shown in Fig. 7.
The MBBDHE is similar to BBHE in a sense that MBBDHE divides
the histogram into two sections (dark section and bright section) using
mean brightness and applies HE operation for both sections separately.
However, instead of maintaining the mean brightness, the mean gray
level is shifted to the middle of the dynamic range. As shown
⌈ ⌉in Fig. 7,
𝑥𝜇 , whatever the value is, will be shifted to 𝑦𝜇 = 𝑘−1 2
= 128.
Besides that, instead of enhancing the gray levels proportional to their
frequency in on direction only (as shown in Fig. 6), MBBDHE enhances
the gray levels away from the mean brightness in two directions. The
bi-directional nature of MBBDHE addresses not only washed-out effect,
but also realizes full utilization of the dynamic range conforming to
HVS in perceiving gray level contrast.
In this paper, the proposed algorithm uses regional contrast infor-
mation as weight to adjust the enhancement produced by MBBDHE.
An enhancement reference and regional contrast weights complements
each other for the proposed algorithm to work. Theoretically, result
from any contrast enhancement algorithm can be used to replace
MBBDHE to form reference, MBBDHE; however, MBBDHE, being a
global gray level remapping method, is preferred for its efficient com-
putational property, preservation of brightness relationships between
Y.C. Hum, Y.K. Tee, W.-S. Yap et al. Signal Processing: Image Communication 103 (2022) 116657

regions in image and avoidance of GHE’s limitations. Applying regional

contrast weight described in Section 6.2 transforms the algorithm into
pixel-wise gray level remapping.

6.2. Formulation of problem and the proposed algorithm

Let 𝐼 ∈ Z𝐻×𝑊 (in which 𝐼 (𝑖, 𝑗) = {𝑖, 𝑗 ∈ Z+ |𝑖 ≤ 𝐻, 𝑗 ≤ 𝑊 })

depicts the input image and 𝐽𝑟𝑒𝑓 ∈ Z𝐻×𝑊 (in which 𝐽𝑟𝑒𝑓 (𝑖, 𝑗) = {𝑖, 𝑗 ∈
Z+ |𝑖 ≤ 𝐻, 𝑗 ≤ 𝑊 }) depicts the resultant image of MBBDHE, where
𝐻 ∈ Z+ and 𝑊 ∈ Z+ denotes the height and the width of the image
respectively. Reference enhancement, 𝐸 ∈ Z𝐻×𝑊 (in which 𝐸 (𝑖, 𝑗) =
{𝑖, 𝑗 ∈ Z+ |𝑖 ≤ 𝐻, 𝑗 ≤ 𝑊 }) denotes the values to be added to input
image, 𝐼 in order to increase or decrease pixel’s values (to brighten
or darken the pixels) to achieve contrast enhancement of the reference
result, 𝐼 + 𝐸 = 𝐽𝑟𝑒𝑓 . Therefore, the reference enhancement between 𝐼
and 𝐽𝑟𝑒𝑓 from MBBDHE can be computed as shown in (4):

𝐸 (𝑖, 𝑗) = 𝐽𝑟𝑒𝑓 (𝑖, 𝑗) − 𝐼(𝑖, 𝑗) (4)

Then the information of regional contrast is acquired by windowing Fig. 8. Graph plot of 𝑓 (𝑎, 𝑏, 𝑖, 𝑗) versus the absolute gray level difference
the input image using a 𝑤 × 𝑤 kernel where 𝑤 = {2𝑛 + 1 ∶ 𝑛 ∈ Z+ |𝑛 ≤ |𝐼𝑝𝑎𝑑 (𝑎, 𝑏) − 𝐼 (𝑖, 𝑗) | between a neighboring pixel and the center pixel (𝑖, 𝑗) if 𝛼 = 1.2
and 𝛽 = −20 for different 𝐼 (𝑖, 𝑗). Different 𝐼 (𝑖, 𝑗) will generate different 𝐽 𝑁𝐷 and thus
min(𝑟, 𝑐)}. Similar to 2DHE, the selection of 𝑤 will affect the final result.
different characteristic of 𝑓 (𝑎, 𝑏, 𝑖, 𝑗).
The suitable 𝑤 is selected based on the nature of the image and the
purpose of the user. For this paper, 𝑤 = 33 is adopted to demonstrate
the performance of the proposed algorithm. The padding used for this
convolution process is symmetric padding, where 𝑤−1 2
pixels width of
mirror padding
( is) adding
( to )all four sides of the input image to form
𝐻+2( 𝑤−1 ) × 𝑊 +2( 𝑤−1 )
𝐼𝑝𝑎𝑑 ∈ Z 2 2 .
Regional gray level similarity, 𝑅 ∈ Z𝐻×𝑊 computed from padded
image, 𝐼𝑝𝑎𝑑 , is computed to reflect regional homogeneity of region
around 𝐼(𝑖, 𝑗). The lower the similarity which is 𝑅(𝑖, 𝑗), the higher the
regional contrast of pixel 𝐼(𝑖, 𝑗); thus, less enhancement is required
for pixel 𝐼(𝑖, 𝑗) and vice versa. In another word, 𝑅 (𝑖, 𝑗) represents the
weight of the enhancement and determines the amount of enhancement
needed for 𝐼(𝑖, 𝑗), where ∀𝑅 (𝑖, 𝑗) ∈ [0, 1]. The 𝑅 can be computed as in
(5).
𝑖+ 𝑤−1 𝑗+ 𝑤−1
1 ∑2 ∑ 2
𝑅 (𝑖, 𝑗) = 𝑓 (𝑎, 𝑏, 𝑖, 𝑗) (5)
𝑤2
𝑎=𝑖− 𝑤−1
2
𝑏=𝑗− 𝑤−1
2

Where,
( )
1
𝑓 (𝑎, 𝑏, 𝑖, 𝑗) = | |
(6)
|𝐼𝑝𝑎𝑑 (𝑎,𝑏)−𝐼(𝑖,𝑗)|−𝛽−𝐽 𝑁𝐷(𝐼(𝑖,𝑗))
1 + 𝛼| |
⎧ ( )0.5
⎪𝑇 (1 − 𝑥 ) + 3 𝑓 𝑜𝑟 𝑥 ≤ 127
𝐽 𝑁𝐷 (𝑥) = ⎨ 0 127 (7)
⎪𝛾 (𝑥 − 127) + 3 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑤𝑖𝑠𝑒
⎩
13
In this article, 𝑇0 = 17, 𝛾 = 128 . The |𝐼𝑝𝑎𝑑 (𝑎, 𝑏) − 𝐼 (𝑖, 𝑗) | repre-
sents the absolute gray level difference between the neighboring pixel,
𝐼𝑝𝑎𝑑 (𝑎, 𝑏) with the kernel center, 𝐼(𝑖, 𝑗); the parameter 𝛼 and 𝛽 define the
characteristic of 𝑓 (𝑎, 𝑏, 𝑖, 𝑗) (defined in (6) in which 𝐽 𝑁𝐷(.) is defined
in (7)) recommended to be set at 1.2 and −20 respectively to model
the HVS. These values of 𝛼 and 𝛽 are set empirically determined based
Fig. 9. Regional gray level similarity, R. (a) Forest Image (b) 𝑅 of Forest Image (c)
on human visual system by taking the mean values of 𝛼 and 𝛽 across
Cameraman Image (d) 𝑅 of Cameraman Image (e) Kids Image (f) 𝑅 of Kids Image.
7 observers on 120 randomly chosen color images and 120 randomly
grayscale images from image database. The relationship between the
gray level difference and the 𝑓 (𝑎, 𝑏, 𝑖, 𝑗) is as shown in below Fig. 8.
The smaller the gray level differences, the higher the 𝑓 (𝑎, 𝑏, 𝑖, 𝑗) region. When enhancing contrast of and image, the dynamic range of
resulting in higher regional gray level similarity, 𝑅(𝑖, 𝑗), thus more the enhanced region expands to provide more space for larger gray
enhancement is applied. The 𝑅 can be visualized in Fig. 9 to see which level difference, consequently, the mean brightness of the enhanced
particular regions in the image need more enhancement. region changes. For good contrast region that has less enhancement, the
Fig. 9 shows the R of different I. The lower the value of R(i,j) (darker brightness shifting is lesser than poor contrast region. This is also the
regions in R as shown in Fig. 9), the better the contrast of that particular main disadvantage of pixel-wise gray level remapping method because
w×w region around I(i,j). enhancement is performed separately for each local region.
After computing 𝑅, brightness readjustment is needed to preserve In order to readjust the brightness, the reference enhancement of
brightness relationship between poor contrast region and good contrast the from the global gray level remapping method, 𝐸 becomes useful.

6
Y.C. Hum, Y.K. Tee, W.-S. Yap et al.
Fig. 10. Visualization of Changes Along the Proposed Operation (a) Original Image 𝐼
(b) 𝐼 + 𝑅 ⊙ 𝐸 (c) 𝐽 = 𝐼 + 𝑅 ⊙ 𝐸 + 𝐵 in which the ⊙ represents element-wise dot product
(multiplication).
First, the enhancement of good contrast region is emphasized to form
𝐺 = {𝐺 (𝑖, 𝑗) |1 ≤ 𝑖 ≤ 𝐻, 1 ≤ 𝑗 ≤ 𝑊 } defined in (8).
𝐺 (𝑖, 𝑗) = (1 − 𝑅 (𝑖, 𝑗)) 𝐸 (𝑖, 𝑗)
Then, the emphasized enhancement of good contrast region, 𝐺,
is smoothed to produce averaged brightness shifting within the good
contrast region. Median filter is used to smoothen 𝐺 for better edge
preservation and minimize ‘‘halo effect’’ of most pixel-wise gray level
remapping (such as CLAHE). The median filtering uses the same ker-
nel size (𝑤 × 𝑤 square kernel) and symmetric padding. Let 𝐺𝑝𝑎𝑑 =
{𝐺𝑝𝑎𝑑 (𝑎, 𝑏)|1 − 𝑤−1
2
≤ 𝑎 ≤ 𝐻 + 𝑤−12
, 1 − 𝑤−1
2
≤ 𝑏 ≤ 𝑊 + 𝑤−1 2
} be the
symmetrically padded 𝐺, brightness adjustment, 𝐵 = {𝐵(𝑖, 𝑗)|1 ≤ 𝑖 ≤
𝐻, 1 ≤ 𝑗 ≤ 𝑊 } (defined in (9)) can be computed by applying median
filter to 𝐺𝑝𝑎𝑑 .
𝐵 (𝑖, 𝑗) = 𝑚𝑒𝑑𝑖𝑎𝑛 {𝐺𝑝𝑎𝑑 (𝑠, 𝑡)}
(𝑠,𝑡)∈𝑊 (𝑖,𝑗)
Where,
⎧ ⎫
⎪ | 𝑖 − 𝑤 − 1 ≤ 𝑥 ≤ 𝑖 + 𝑤 − 1, ⎪
| 2 2 𝐽𝑟𝑒𝑓 occurs. The smaller the 𝑤, the closer the resultant 𝐽 to 𝐽𝑟𝑒𝑓 . For
𝑊 (𝑖, 𝑗) = ⎨(𝑥, 𝑦) | ⎬ (10)
| 𝑗− 𝑤−1 ≤𝑦≤𝑗+ 𝑤−1
⎪ | ⎪
⎩ 2 2 ⎭
𝑊 (𝑖, 𝑗) in (10) represents set of coordinates in 𝑤×𝑤 neighborhood with
(𝑖, 𝑗) as center. Then, the final output image of the proposed algorithm,
𝐽 = {𝐽 (𝑖, 𝑗)|1 ≤ 𝑖 ≤ 𝐻, 1 ≤ 𝑗 ≤ 𝑊 }, can be computed by adding up
input image with weighted enhancement and additional brightness as
shown in (11).
𝐽 (𝑖, 𝑗) = 𝐼 (𝑖, 𝑗) + 𝑅 (𝑖, 𝑗) 𝐸 (𝑖, 𝑗) + 𝐵(𝑖, 𝑗)
Fig. 10 below shows the changes from input image, to weighted
enhancement, and finally to brightness readjustment. As discussed
above, asynchronous local enhancement causes distorted brightness re-
lationship between poor contrast region and good contrast region. The
region in the red box in Fig. 10 represents good contrast region where
the features of the leaves can be observed by HVS, while green box
represents poor contrast region. In the original image, the brightness
of red box region is lower than of green box region. After regional
contrast-based enhancement as shown in Fig. 10(b), the brightness of
the red box region shifted less than of the green box region, resulting
into same brightness.
In order to maintain the brightness relationship between red box
region and green box region, where red box region is darker than green
box region, additional smoothened brightness shifting is applied to the
region as show in Fig. 10(c).
The only parameter to be defined for this proposed algorithm is
the 𝑤 selection for which it should be based on the size of area when
user wishes to look for details in the image. When using small 𝑤, more
details are preserved resulting in more unnatural over-enhancement to
the image. In contrast, large 𝑤 tends to inhibit enhancement of some
details in the image when the details are too small relative to the 𝑤 × 𝑤
window. When assessing the image, although the whole image is being
seen at the same time by HVS, human conscious is focusing on only a
smaller region in the image. For example, when trying to assess feature
of the face of the cameraman in Fig. 9(c), the observer is focusing
Signal Processing: Image Communication 103 (2022) 116657
(8)
Fig. 11. Effect of Different w on Cameraman Image (a) Input Image. (b) 𝑗𝑟𝑒𝑓 (c) 𝑤 = 3
(d) 𝑤 = 23 (e) 𝑤 = 33 (f) 𝑤 = 53.
on the face only of the cameraman, despite the whole image is being
observed at the same time. The area of focus should not be too small
because it is impossible for human to assess an image pixel by pixel. In
an extreme example, detail as small as one pixel carries no important
information for the observer, only combinations of multiple pixels can
form meaningful feature to the observer, especially in camera taken
photos. Therefore, the 𝑤×𝑤 window should be selected to represent the
(9) area of focus of observers when assessing the result of the enhancement.
In this report, 𝑤 = 33. However, different 𝑤 can be used depending on
the applications.
As shown in Fig. 11, when 𝑤 is too small, over-enhancement as in
example, unpleasant over-enhancement occurs at the face of the cam-
eraman in Fig. 11(c) because the window is too small when considering
regional contrast at the face area. The over-enhancement is suppressed
when using larger 𝑤 in Fig. 11(d) because the window is large enough
to consider the whole face of cameraman when computing regional
contrast of the face.
However, large 𝑤 will also cause loss of small details as shown in
Fig. 12. The result as shown in Fig. 12(f) uses 𝑤 = 53, hence when some
(11) details are smaller relative to the selected 𝑤, the proposed algorithm
diminishes those details.
Generally, global gray level remapping methods struggle to search
for the appropriate amount of enhancement across different types of
input images. Different global gray level remapping methods tend to
either over-enhance or under-enhance the images. In another hand,
pixel-wise gray level remapping methods ‘‘scramble’’ the brightness
relationship, distort luminance information, and causing unpleasant
checker box effect and halo effect.
The proposed algorithm is designed to harness the advantages of
both global and pixel-wise gray level remapping algorithms, maintain-
ing the brightness relationship as in global method, while inhibiting
over-enhancement from the 𝐽𝑟𝑒𝑓 using local information of the image.
At the same time, the proposed algorithm produces no checker box
effect and minimal halo effect. Below we present the pseudocode of
the proposed algorithm for clarity in Table 1.
The proposed algorithm entails 4 modules. To further facilitate
understanding, we elucidate these processes of the proposed algorithm
by using a flowchart in Fig. 13.
7. Results and discussions
To assess the performance, 13 opted contrast enhancement algo-
rithms — GHE [9], BBHE [31], DHE [14], GLG [32], WTHE [17],
HMF [16], FHSABP [33], CLAHE [22], CVC [18], and 2DHE [15],
BPDHE [34], EPMP [35], SICE [36] were compared with the pro-
posed algorithm. Some standard test images, MATLAB test images,
7
Y.C. Hum, Y.K. Tee, W.-S. Yap et al. Signal Processing: Image Communication 103 (2022) 116657

Table 1
Pseudocode of the Proposed Algorithm.

Fig. 12. Effect of different 𝑤 on Forest Image (a) Input Image (b) 𝐽𝑟𝑒𝑓 (c) 𝑤 = 3 (d)
𝑤 = 23 (e) 𝑤 = 33 (f) 𝑤 = 53.

internet resource, and a custom image were used. The performances

of the contrast enhancement algorithms were compared in terms of
complexity (computational time with respect to image size) and image
quality (information loss and contrast). However, for contrast enhance-
ment algorithms consisting user-defined parameters, the parameters
are specified in Table 2. The results shown in this article imply no
superiority of one CE algorithm over the other one; changes in the
user-defined parameters can improve or impair the image quality as
well as the computational speed. Most CE algorithms are trading-off
among complexity, image quality preservation, amount of contrast
enhancement, consistency, and level of automation. It would be inap-
propriate to define that certain CE algorithm is generally better than
another; any CE algorithm might be superior than others for different
applications. The discussions in this section generally focus on inves-
tigation of the nature of different CE algorithms on different types of
images.

Fig. 13. Flowchart (a) MBBDHE (b) Reference Enhancement based on MBBDHE (c) 7.1. Metrics to quantify the performance of CE algorithms
Regional Contrast Information Acquisition (d) Brightness Readjustment.

We adopted the following metrics to quantitative measures to com-

pares the performance of different CE algorithms on different images
with the proposed algorithm, Discrete Entropy (DE) [37], Measure of
Enhancement (EME) [38,39], SSIM index [40].

8
Y.C. Hum, Y.K. Tee, W.-S. Yap et al. Signal Processing: Image Communication 103 (2022) 116657

Table 2 A good enhancement should improve the local contrast of an image

Parameters of CE Algorithms.
with minimal compromise on the details (minimal saturation), or even
CE Algorithms Parameters enrich the details of the image. It is not sufficient to measure the
WTHE 𝑃𝑙 = 0, 𝑟 = 0.5, 𝑣 = 0.5, 𝑊𝑜𝑢𝑡 = 255 𝐷𝐸 and 𝐸𝑀𝐸 of output image, the values must be compared with
HMF 𝜆 = 1, 𝛾 = 100, 𝛼 = 5, 𝑣 = 0.01𝐻𝑊
the 𝐷𝐸 and 𝐸𝑀𝐸 of input image to measure the improvement or
FHSABP 𝑁 =6
CLAHE 𝑃𝑙𝑖𝑚𝑖𝑡 = 0.01, 𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑒𝑠 = 8 × 8 deterioration. The values difference, 𝛥𝐷𝐸 = 𝐷𝐸𝑜𝑢𝑡𝑝𝑢𝑡 − 𝐷𝐸𝑖𝑛𝑝𝑢𝑡 and
CVC 𝑤 = 7, 𝛼 = 𝛽 = 𝛾 = 31 𝛥𝐸𝑀𝐸 = 𝐸𝑀𝐸𝑜𝑢𝑡𝑝𝑢𝑡 −𝐸𝑀𝐸𝑖𝑛𝑝𝑢𝑡 are computed to indicate improvement
2DHE 𝑤=5 or impairment of local contrast and details. Besides, luminance similar-
Proposed Algorithm 𝑤 = 33 ity, 𝑙 and structural similarity, 𝑠 are used to measure the performance
of an CE algorithm in preserving the information of the original image.

The DE of an image is computed as described in (12): 7.2. Categorization of test images

∑
256
In this paper, 776 test images were used, including 554 one-channel
𝐷𝐸 (𝐽 ) = − 𝑃𝐽 (𝑖) log 𝑃𝐽 (𝑖) (12)
𝑖=1 grayscale images, and 222 three-channel color images. The CE algo-
rithms were applied to the lightness field in the L*a*b* format of the
where 𝑃𝐽 = {𝑃𝐽 (𝑖)|𝑖 = 1, 2, … , 256} represents the probability distribu-
color images. The sources from which test images were adopted are
tion function (PDF) of the 𝑖th gray levels of the 8-bit image 𝐽 which is
listed in Table 3.
normalized from histogram of 𝐽 .
To assure the evaluation is not biased to any particular type of
𝑘1 𝑘2 ( )
1 ∑∑ max 𝐽𝑎,𝑏 + 1 images, we categorized the test images into 7 categories: high contrast
𝐸𝑀𝐸 (𝐽 ) = 20 ln ( ) (13) discrete tone images, low contrast discrete tone images, dynamic tone
𝑘1 𝑘2 𝑎=1 𝑏=1 min 𝐽𝑎,𝑏 + 1
images, continuous tone images, intensive hidden details monotonous
To calculate the EME of an image 𝐽 , as defined in (13), the image is images, flat monotonous images. The number of images in each cate-
divided into 𝑘1 × 𝑘2 sub-blocks, 𝐽𝑎,𝑏 . The measurement of enhancement gory is imbalanced; therefore, categorical weights, 𝑤𝑘 (defined in (19))
EME is the summation of 20 ln (.) of all sub-blocks, where (.) of each are applied to each metric when overall performances are measured.
block represents the ratio of maximum gray level to minimum gray
𝑁
level. The purpose is to assess the contrast of the image window by 𝑤𝑘 = ( ) (19)
𝐾 𝑛𝑘
window based on the spread of the gray levels in the windows.
For this paper, luminance and structural similarity of SSIM (de- Where 𝑘 depicts categorical index: 𝑘 = 1, 2, … , 7; 𝑁 depicts total
fined in (14)) are used to compare the performances of different CE number of test images, 𝑁 = 776; 𝐾 depicts total number of categories:
algorithms. The algorithm of SSIM can be simplified as following: 𝐾 = 7.

𝑆𝑆𝐼𝑀 (𝐼, 𝐽 ) = [𝑙 (𝐼,̇ 𝐽 )]𝛼 [𝑐 (𝐼, 𝐽 )]𝛽 [𝑠 (𝐼, 𝐽 )]𝛾 (14)

Where, 𝑙 (𝐼, 𝐽 ) (defined in (15)) depicts luminance similarity between
input image 𝐼 and output image 𝐽 ; 𝑐 (𝐼, 𝐽 ) (defined in (16)) depicts
contrast similarity between input image 𝐼 and output image 𝐽 ; 𝑠(𝐼, 𝐽 )
(defined in (17)) depicts structural similarity between input image
𝐼 and output image 𝐽 ; 𝛼 depicts emphasis of luminance similarity ;
𝛽 depicts emphasis of contrast similarity and 𝛾 depicts emphasis of
structural similarity. The parameters 𝛼, 𝛽, 𝛾 ∈ [0, ∞) represents the ratio
of luminance, contrast, and structural similarity to the final SSIM index.
The similarities are computed as shown below:
𝑙 (𝐼, 𝐽 ) = (2𝜇𝐼 𝜇𝐽 + 𝐶1 )∕(𝜇𝐼2 + 𝜇𝐽2 + 𝐶1 )
𝑐 (𝐼, 𝐽 ) = (2𝜎𝐼 𝜎𝐽 + 𝐶2 )∕(𝜎𝐼2 + 𝜎𝐽2 + 𝐶2 )
𝑠 (𝐼, 𝐽 ) = (𝜎𝐼𝐽 + 𝐶3 )∕(𝜎𝐼 𝜎𝐽 + 𝐶3 )
Where 𝜇𝐼 and 𝜇𝐽 represents local mean of 𝐼 and 𝐽 respectively
to compare luminance; 𝜎𝐼 and 𝜎𝐽 represents local standard deviation
of 𝐼 and 𝐽 respectively to compare contrast. The local information
is extracted using radius (standard deviation of isotropic Gaussian
function) of 1.5 (default setting of MATLAB). Let the height of both
images as 𝐻 and width as 𝑊 , 𝜎𝐼𝐽 defined in (18):
∑ ‘‘spread’’ of the data.
1
𝜎𝐼𝐽 = (𝐼 (𝑖, 𝑗) − 𝜇𝐼 )(𝐽 (𝑖, 𝑗) − 𝜇𝐽 ) (18)
𝐻𝑊 − 1 ∀𝑖,𝑗
Following the default setting of MATLAB’s ssim(.) function, 𝐶1 =
[0.01 (𝑘 − 1)]2 , 𝐶2 = [0.03 (𝑘 − 1)]2 , 𝐶3 = 𝐶2 ∕2, where 𝑘 = 256 for 8-
bit image. By setting 𝛼 = 1 and 𝛽, 𝛾 = 0, luminance similarity can
be obtained: 𝑆𝑆𝐼𝑀 (𝐼, 𝐽 ) = 𝑙(𝐼, 𝐽 ). In another hand, when 𝛾 = 1 and
𝛼, 𝛽 = 0, structural similarity is obtained: 𝑆𝑆𝐼𝑀 (𝐼, 𝐽 ) = 𝑠(𝐼, 𝐽 ). Both
𝑙(𝐼, 𝐽 ) and 𝑠(𝐼, 𝐽 ) are used in this paper to measure performances of the
CE algorithms.
𝐷𝐸 represents the richness of the details of the image, while 𝐸𝑀𝐸
represents local contrast of the image. Both 𝐷𝐸 and 𝐸𝑀𝐸 are used to
indicate the performance of an CE algorithm in enhancing the image.
7.3. Quantitative result
The weighted mean of the resulting 𝛥DE, 𝛥EME, l, and 𝑠, are shown
in Table 4 to indicate the overall performance of each CE algorithms
across the test images; whereas, the weighted standard deviation of
the resulting DE, EME, l, and 𝑠 across test images by each of the CE
algorithms as shown in Table 5 will be used to indicate the overall
consistency of that respective algorithm.
As shown in Table 4, the proposed algorithm generally produces
greater 𝛥DE. However, for already-high-contrast images (high EME),
the proposed algorithm tends to reduce the local contrast of the high
(15) contrast regions. As expected, the proposed algorithm offers poor lumi-
(16) nance preservation ability, hence the proposed algorithm is not suitable
for applications for which brightness preservation is crucial. Besides,
(17)
the structural similarity of the proposed algorithm, is more inferior than
other CE algorithms, hence it is also not suitable for applications that
require high detail preservation ability.
As shown in Table 5, although the performance of the proposed
algorithm is not the best among all, the proposed algorithm shows a
better overall consistency than other CE algorithms. The proposed al-
gorithm shows smaller statistical fluctuation, hence resulting in smaller
Histogram equalization is regarded as a non-linear process. Splitting
followed by equalizing the color channel individually sounds logical
but is not preferred in practice. Equalization often involves only the
intensity values of the image not the color components. So for a RGB
color image, HE should not be applied individually on each channel
on the ground that the correlation between the color channels will
impose undesired modification chromaticity of colors. Instead, it should
be applied such that intensity values are equalized without disturbing
the color balance of the image. To compound the problem, applying
HE on each individual channel will lead to higher computation time as
the algorithm will be performed for three times. Therefore, the better
option would be converting the color space of the image from RGB

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Table 3
Sources of test images.
Image database Format
http://sipi.usc.edu/database/database.php TIFF
http://www.imageprocessingplace.com/root_files_V3/image_databases.htm TIF
https://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/Discrete+Tone+Image+Dataset BMP, PNG, JPG
http://decsai.ugr.es/cvg/dbimagenes/ PGM, PPM, PBM
MATLAB TIF, JPG

Table 4
Mean of metrics for different CE Algorithms across 776 test images.
Mean
CE Algorithms
𝛥𝐷𝐸 𝛥𝐸𝑀𝐸 𝑙 𝑠
GHE 2.844 24.290 0.876 0.946
BBHE 2.251 23.371 0.919 0.958
DHE 2.799 10.927 0.936 0.964
GLG 2.916 18.071 0.908 0.979
WTHE −11.174 8.880 0.858 0.934
HMF 3.139 13.632 0.912 0.963
FHSABP 23.048 21.969 0.932 0.962
CLAHE 15.839 10.778 0.957 0.979
CVC 2.912 13.657 0.953 0.971
2DHE 3.434 20.415 0.904 0.965
BPDHE 2.568 16.523 0.896 0.956
EPMP 2.698 12.265 0.902 0.935
SICE 3.6589 10.369 0.912 0.925
Proposed Algorithm 16.261 12.749 0.911 0.938

Table 5
Standard deviation of metrics for different CE Algorithms across 776 images.
Standard Deviation
CE Algorithms
𝐷𝐸 𝐸𝑀𝐸 𝑙 𝑠
GHE 19.687 22.460 0.143 0.072
BBHE 19.153 22.640 0.111 0.051
DHE 19.683 18.197 0.114 0.068
GLG 19.346 21.396 0.107 0.050
WTHE 26.530 17.870 0.159 0.070
HMF 19.353 16.522 0.127 0.053
FHSABP 7.387 26.448 0.107 0.047
CLAHE 14.171 20.423 0.074 0.030
CVC 19.160 21.247 0.117 0.041
2DHE 19.447 19.894 0.127 0.056
BPDHE 19.652 22.256 0.155 0.075
EPMP 18365 18.693 0.145 0.072
SICE 19.693 19.638 0.168 0.069
Proposed Algorithm 14.955 16.214 0.077 0.063

Fig. 14. Implementation of proposed algorithm in L*a*b (CIELAB) color spaces (a)
into another color spaces which separate intensity values from color Original image of ‘‘Airplane’’ (b) Proposed algorithm on ‘‘Airplane’’ (c) Original image
components before performing the equalization. Here we demonstrate of ‘‘Sailboat’’ (d) Proposed algorithm on ‘‘Sailboat’’ (e) Original image of ‘‘Mandrill’’
the application of proposed algorithm by converting the image to (f) Proposed algorithm on ‘‘Mandrill’’.
CIELAB color spaces (CIEL∗a∗b∗ color space, where L∗ denotes the
luminance, a∗ denotes the color on a green–red scale and b∗ denotes
the color on a blue–yellow scale). The CE algorithms were applied to
the lightness field in the L*a*b* format of the color images (see Fig. 14).

7.4. Qualitative result

Fig. 15 demonstrates the consistency property exhibited by the

proposed algorithm on different contrast condition of original image
as compared to the two advanced pixel-based histogram equalization
methods: GLG and 2DHE.
The standard deviation of DE for pixel-wise remapping algorithms
is generally lower than global gray level remapping algorithms; at the
same time, the mean of the 𝛥DE of pixel-wise algorithms is higher than
global gray level remapping algorithms. It shows that pixel-wise gray
Fig. 15. Example to illustrate enhancement consistency of the proposed algorithm (a)
level remapping mechanisms produces consistently rich details output
Original Images (b) Outputs of 2DHE (c) Outputs of GLG (d) Outputs of Proposed
images. However, FHSABP and CLAHE produce high standard deviation Algorithm.
for EME, while the proposed algorithm retains the lowest standard

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Y.C. Hum, Y.K. Tee, W.-S. Yap et al. Signal Processing: Image Communication 103 (2022) 116657

Fig. 16. Forest Image from low contrast discrete tone image category (a) Input Image
(b) GHE (c) BBHE (d) DHE (e) GLG (f) WTHE (g) HMF (h) FHSABP (i) CLAHE (j) CVC
(k) 2DHE (l) EPMP (m) SICE (n) BPDHE (o) Proposed Algorithm.

deviation for the output EME. Besides that, proposed algorithm also
produces lowest mean 𝛥EME, it indicates that the local contrast en-
hancement of the proposed algorithm is the lowest. In another hand, it
also means that the proposed algorithm is able to consistently produce
rich details images with minimal contrast enhancement.
We demonstrate the qualitative result for three chosen categories by
the 13 CE algorithms and the proposed algorithm: low contrast discrete
tone image (Forest) in Fig. 16, Monotone image (Kids) in Fig. 17,
Dynamic tone image (Camera Man) in Fig. 18. Notice that the qualities Fig. 17. Kids Image from Monotone image tone image category (a) Input Image (b)
of the resultant images generated from the proposed algorithm are con- GHE (c) BBHE (d) DHE (e) GLG (f) WTHE (g) HMF (h) FHSABP (i) CLAHE (j) CVC (k)
2DHE (l) EPMP (m) SICE (n) BPDHE (o) Proposed Algorithm.
sistent under different images which are affected by extreme lighting
and illuminations. The resultant images demonstrate the strength of
the proposed algorithm — visually appealing tone mapping without
introducing artifacts in various images with different dynamic ranges.
We would like to emphasize that the result shown in this section
does not indicate any superiority of an algorithm over another. The
performance of an CE algorithm might change based on the hyperpa-
rameters setting: with different configuration, an CE algorithm might
perform differently. However, algorithms with many hyperparameters
are difficult to be automated and applied into system with uncer-
tain environment. Being able to consistently perform in uncontrolled
environment should not be the sole reason for an algorithm to be
adopted for a particular application; each contrast enhancement algo-
rithm that we studied excels in different properties of the algorithm.
These properties trading off each other depending on the nature of the
algorithm.
The average processing time for each algorithm on 776 images
of different sizes (resized) was shown in Table 6. From the table,
the main finding is that the additional advantage provided by the
proposed algorithm in handling images under different exposure comes
with a price, that is, higher computational cost. From the table, we
can notice that the average processing time of proposed algorithm
increases significantly as the size of the images increases. While the
proposed algorithm addresses one of the toughest problems in his-
togram equalization substantially, it suffers from the main limitation of
high processing time; thus, it is one of our future works in optimizing
the framework in order to establish a framework that can address the
inconsistent problem of histogram equalization without compromising
the processing time.
Fig. 18. Camera Man Image from dynamic tone image category (a) Input Image (b)
We have designed an experiment to further gauge the performance GHE (c) BBHE (d) DHE (e) GLG (f) WTHE (g) HMF (h) FHSABP (i) CLAHE (j) CVC (k)
of the proposed algorithm under different scenario, firstly, each of the 2DHE (l) EPMP (m) SICE (n) BPDHE (o) Proposed Algorithm.
776 images will be classified into six categories: (a) High Contrast

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Y.C. Hum, Y.K. Tee, W.-S. Yap et al. Signal Processing: Image Communication 103 (2022) 116657

Table 6
Average processing time for different CE Algorithms.
Average Processing Time (seconds)
CE Algorithms
100 × 100 200 × 200 400 × 400
GHE 0.0348 0.0369 0.0372
BBHE 0.0376 0.0534 0.1025
DHE 0.1881 0.2070 0.2491
GLG 0.3502 0.3851 0.4081
WTHE 0.0372 0.0513 0.0982
HMF 0.0426 0.0563 0.1152
FHSABP 0.0526 0.0586 0.1125
CLAHE 0.0745 0.0826 0.0563
CVC 0.1752 0.2810 0.5290
2DHE 0.3697 0.4135 0.5426
BPDHE 0.3789 0.4965 0.6539
EPMP 0.0415 0.0465 0.0489
SICE 1.2264 2.1075 4.2302
Proposed Algorithm 1.3659 3.2569 16.5963

Discrete Tone Images (HC) (b) Low Contrast Discrete Tone Images (LC)
(c) Dynamic Tone Images (DT) (d) Continuous Tone Images (CT) (e)
Intensive Hidden Details Monotonous Images (DM) (f) Flat Monotonous
Images (FM). Each classes of images carries different properties and
might affect the performances of CE algorithms. Then, we perform the
quantitative Measures (DE%, EME, I(I,J), s(I,J)) for the Performances of
each CE Algorithms on the classified image. The classification scheme
was designed as following: The images were classified based on 𝜃𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑒 ,
𝐶𝑒𝑥𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑒 , 𝜎 into discrete tone, dynamic tone, continuous tone, and
monotonous images as shown in Fig. 20. Discrete tone and monotone
images were further classified based on EME and span.
Properties of histogram includes 𝐷𝐸, a metric used to indicate
overall contrast of the image. For better representation, 𝐷𝐸 is nor-
malized to percentage of maximum possible discrete entropy 𝐷𝐸% =
𝐷𝐸∕𝐷𝐸max × 100. In this study, one more property of histogram is used
to rate and classify input images. An 8-bit input image has 256 possible
{ }
gray levels. Let the 𝑖-th gray levels be 𝑋 = 𝑥𝑖 |𝑖 = 1, 2, … , 256 where
{ }
𝑥𝑖 = 𝑖 − 1; the input histogram 𝐻 = ℎ𝑖 |𝑖 = 1, 2, … , 256 . The frequency
ℎ𝑖 is the number of occurrences of 𝑥𝑖 in the input image. However, not
all images span the full dynamic range. The unoccupied neighboring
gray levels are referred as ‘‘gap’’, while the occupied neighboring gray
levels are referred as ‘‘stack’’ in this study. The percentage of gray levels
occupied by stacks to the whole dynamic range (256 levels) is referred
as span of the histogram, span ∈[0,100]. In general, global gray level
remapping algorithms that only take histogram as input, for example
GHE, have lower consistency — the algorithm sometimes works ap-
propriately good and sometimes unsatisfying. In order to improve the
performance and consistency, some HE-based variations also consider
2D local information of the image in computing the remapping function
(typical example such as 2DHE and CVC). In this study, 32 × 32 𝐸𝑀𝐸
is used to measure local properties of the images.
Since HVS perceives contrast differently at different background
luminance, the brightness and darkness information are required in
classifying the image instead of taking the mean brightness because
brightness cancels off darkness in mean value. The bright and dark
regions are defined as regions where JND above its average of JND,
hence the dark region gray levels will fall within [0,b] and bright region
gray levels will fall within [w,255] as shown in Fig. 19 below: In
this report, two indexes are used created to represent the amount of
bright and dark regions in the image. Let the PDF of the input image be
𝑃 = {𝑃 (𝑖)|𝑖 = 1, 2, … , 256} calculated, the histogram bright index, 𝜃𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡
(defined in (21)), and dark index, 𝜃𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑘 (defined in (20)) are computed
as follow:
256 ∑
𝑏+1
𝜃𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑘 = 𝑃 (𝑖)
𝑏 + 1 𝑖=1
256 ∑256
𝜃𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 = 𝑃 (𝑖)
256 − 𝑤 𝑖=𝑤+1
Fig. 19. Example of 𝑏 and 𝑤 values of an image computed from average of JND.
Then a discrete index, 𝜃𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑒 ∈ [0, ∞) is computed to indicate
degree of distinction of the tones in the input image. Larger 𝜃𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑒
(defined in (22)) implies greater distinction of the tone in the image,
meaning more black and white regions in the image. Fully spanned
uniform histogram produces 𝜃𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 = 𝜃𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑘 = 𝜃𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑒 = 1.
𝜃𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 + 𝜃𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑘
𝜃𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑟𝑒𝑡𝑒 = 𝜃𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝜃𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑘 (22)
2
Then, information such as ratio of black and white regions to the
∑ ∑256
whole image, 𝐶𝑒𝑥𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑒 = 𝑏+1 𝑖=1 𝑃 (𝑖)+ 𝑖=𝑤+1 𝑃 (𝑖) can be obtained through
∑
𝜃𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑘 and 𝜃𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 . Knowing 𝑏 = 54 and 𝑤 = 188, 𝐶𝑒𝑥𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑒 = 𝑏+1 𝑖=1 𝑃 (𝑖) +
∑256 55 68
𝑖=𝑤+1 𝑃 (𝑖) = 256
𝜃 𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑘 + 256
𝜃𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 . In another word, black and white
regions of the image occupy 𝐶𝑒𝑥𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑒 × 100% of the whole image.
We summarize the characteristics of different classes of images in
Table 7.
Any CE algorithm can hardly work well under all conditions; We
believe that the failure is not random, categorizing types of input
images aids in identifying circumstances when a CE algorithm would
fail. In this study, the performances of CE algorithms with images
of different categories and properties are measured to identify the
behavior of certain CE algorithm for certain images. The results and
data analysis would provide a clear guide on future improvement of the
algorithms, to produce consistent algorithm that can enhance contrast
and reveal the hidden details for varied types of images without failure.
Furthermore, perhaps the results of this study could provide a general
guide on which algorithm to use for different types of images and
applications for better performances.
Table 8 shows that the proposed HE framework is able to produce
output images with at least the second best (perform best in HC, LC
and FM) in terms of overall contrast measured by mean of 𝐷𝐸% on
different categories of images. Table 9 shows that the proposed HE
framework is able to produce output images with best regional contrast
in HC, LC and DT, second best in FM category, measured by mean of
EME. The strength of the proposed HE framework was demonstrated
by Table 10 showing that, in overall, the proposed HE framework
achieves the lowest standard deviation of 𝐷𝑒% and EME. The results
of Table 10 indicate that the proposed HE algorithm can be applied
on images from different categories and performs equally well without
much fluctuation in the overall contrast and regional contrast of output
images.
We have also conducted an ablation study on the proposed algo-
rithm to investigate the contribution comes from the proposed JND
(20) (used to generate 𝑅 (𝑖, 𝑗)) as shown in Table 11 (note that we could
not remove 𝐽𝑟𝑒𝑓 for ablation study since it is an integrated part of
the proposed algorithm). We implemented the proposed HE framework
(21)
without regional gray level similarity, 𝑅 (𝑖, 𝑗) (output image thus =

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Y.C. Hum, Y.K. Tee, W.-S. Yap et al. Signal Processing: Image Communication 103 (2022) 116657

Fig. 20. Flowchart for categorizing input image.

Table 7
Characteristics of different classes of images.
Classes Characteristics
High contrast Consists of distinctive tones and high frequencies black and white
Discrete Tone
regions. High number of distinctive tone regions form sharp edges
resulting in high local contrast.
Low contrast Large and low contrast regions of extreme brightness (black and
white regions) exist in the same image, normally caused by
different brightness of close and far object, large shadows, or
distinctive background for large and low contrast foreground.
Dynamic Tone The tones are averagely spanned across the dynamic range. The
image consists of details and information in regions of all
brightness. In another word, there are dark, bright and gray objects
forming edges with each other.
Continuous Tone Has an obvious overall mean brightness. The tones are less
distinctive but there are still objects from various tones. Consists of
dark, bright, and also gray objects.
Intensive hidden The image is monotonous, and all details are around the same
Monotone
details shades. However, there are intensive hidden details which may be
noisy when over enhanced. The hidden details mostly fall in
continuous tone, which means enhancing the image with global
methods may result in large area saturation of small details.
Flat The image is flat and monotonous. Saturation is less likely to occur
even when being enhanced by global gray level remapping
algorithms.

J=I+E+B) separately to investigate the effect of the proposed HE
framework on different categories of images in the absence of 𝑅 (𝑖, 𝑗).
The results of Table 11 suggested that 𝑅 (𝑖, 𝑗) contributes in both overall
contrast and regional contrast respectively in which the effect on
regional contrast, measured by EME decreased with higher percentage
as compared to overall contrast, measured by 𝐷𝑒% .
In addition, we have conducted another experiment on 𝐽𝑟𝑒𝑓 (we
designed MBBDHE as 𝐽𝑟𝑒𝑓 ) by replacing MBBDHE with other HE meth-
ods. As mentioned before, MBBDHE is designed to be a reference for
the proposed regional contrast based weighted contrast enhancement
algorithm in this study; hence, MBBDHE should be a fast global HE,

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Table 8
Mean of 𝐷𝐸% for different categories.
Mean
Category HC LC DT CT DM FM
Metrics
Methods DE% DE% DE% DE% DE% DE%
GHE 82.327 91.355 83.255 87.941 59.959 67.582
BBHE 84.465 91.631 83.807 88.405 59.969 65.512
DHE 85.384 92.690 84.014 89.533 58.354 67.582
GLG 85.943 93.625 85.977 88.478 59.816 66.139
WTHE 36.693 79.826 67.352 84.182 52.232 40.868
HMF 80.666 95.467 85.242 84.652 60.930 67.396
FHSABP 91.869 97.953 97.863 96.796 97.566 74.009
CLAHE 93.425 96.918 92.409 96.248 76.967 76.106
CVC 84.978 95.594 85.622 89.345 61.246 65.787
2DHE 87.771 91.398 81.986 91.761 59.052 66.211
EPMP 90.518 96.679 82.999 92.371 64.378 67.577
SICE 85.840 91.784 83.264 87.854 59.315 66.244
BPDHE 83.785 89.179 85.218 88.545 60.627 67.582
Proposed 95.066 95.121 93.142 94.312 89.578 84.290

Table 9
Mean of 𝐸𝑀𝐸 for different categories.
Mean
Category HC LC DT CT DM FM
Metrics
Methods EME EME EME EME EME EME
GHE 53.681 20.666 25.432 49.230 41.293 9.934
BBHE 46.131 19.065 24.178 48.512 37.169 22.112
DHE 36.124 19.990 24.510 23.382 33.596 15.130
GLG 38.939 21.340 24.989 47.388 31.357 28.330
WTHE 35.268 15.968 21.732 36.882 16.179 13.434
HMF 48.704 17.069 22.949 42.282 22.985 20.757
FHSABP 18.183 20.165 27.282 49.088 35.998 16.042
CLAHE 48.399 34.286 25.714 54.205 11.022 20.743
CVC 46.418 16.244 21.373 36.029 14.733 20.344
2DHE 38.772 16.029 24.142 34.088 42.371 19.241
EPMP 41.746 18.192 25.995 33.576 30.631 22.192
SICE 35.798 19.172 23.643 48.695 36.935 14.929
BPDHE 37.724 27.960 24.733 45.976 31.089 15.726
Proposed 55.473 31.862 27.705 35.953 30.361 23.146

Table 10 higher standard deviation of 𝐷𝐸% and EME. This result indicates that
Standard deviation of 𝐷𝐸% and EME across different categories.
MBBDHE plays an important role in the framework contributing in
Standard Deviation both overall and regional contrast of resultant images. As mentioned,
Metrics MBBDHE stretches the gray levels away from the mean brightness in
Methods DE% EME both directions. The bi-directional nature of MBBDHE can better handle
GHE 12.53285 17.67702 washed-out effect, since it realizes full utilization of the dynamic range.
BBHE 13.26575 13.07458 This paper describes a HE framework (J = I + R ⊙ E + B) that combines
DHE 13.83239 9.956547 the proposed MBBDHE and the proposed regional gray level similarity
GLG 13.90217 9.804255
WTHE 20.41458 10.52523
scheme. Experimental results have shown that this scheme is effective
HMF 12.95578 13.28623 in enhancing contrast of images from different categories.
FHSABP 9.623839 12.98529
CLAHE 9.753953 16.90673 8. Conclusion, limitation and future works
CVC 13.98729 12.84957
2DHE 14.1464 11.05794
EPMP 13.79683 9.58937 A contrast enhancement algorithm has been proposed to enhance
SICE 13.35891 13.03497 the details of an image and produce promising result. The proposed
BPDHE 12.27959 10.70213 enhancement is consistent and able to produce satisfactory result for
Proposed 4.789455 8.96416
different type of images under various uncontrolled environments. Most
notably, the proposed algorithm uses JND of HVS to measure low
contrast and high contrast regions in the images to produce good
therefore, we compare with GHE, BBHE, DSIHE only since other vari- contrast image in human’s perspective. The resultant image of the pro-
ants will consume much longer processing time and hence not suitable posed algorithm gives merit in enhanced contrast, detail preservation,
to be used as reference or comparisons. The results of the experiment naturality, and consistency under uncontrolled environment.
suggest that MBBDHE outperforms other HE methods. The proposed algorithm is designed to emphasize originally unseen
Table 12 shows that MBBDHE is itself a better global HE en- (hidden) details in the image and maintain contrast relationship of high
hancement scheme with lower mean of 𝐷𝐸% and mean of EME and contrast regions. Therefore, despite the consistently and sufficiently

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Y.C. Hum, Y.K. Tee, W.-S. Yap et al. Signal Processing: Image Communication 103 (2022) 116657

Table 11
Mean of 𝐷𝐸% and EME for different categories.
Removal of 𝑅 (𝑖, 𝑗) from proposed HE framework Proposed HE framework
Categories of input images
𝐷𝐸% EME 𝐷𝐸% EME
HC 91.145 50.592 95.066 55.473
LC 92.542 29.186 95.121 31.862
DT 90.587 23.490 93.142 27.705
CT 95.908 33.682 96.312 35.953
DM 85.190 29.478 88.578 30.361
FM 81.856 21.567 84.290 23.146

Table 12 References
Performance of different candidates for 𝐽𝑟𝑒𝑓 .
Mean Standard Deviation [1] P. Liu, S. Horng, J. Lin, T. Li, Contrast in haze removal: Configurable contrast
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(5) (2019) 2212–2227, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TIP.2018.2823424.
𝐽𝑟𝑒𝑓 𝐷𝐸% 𝐸𝑀𝐸 𝐷𝐸% 𝐸𝑀𝐸
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