International Journal of Software Engineering Research & Practices Vol.

1, Issue 2, April, 2011

USE OF HISTOGRAM EQUALIZATION IN

IMAGE PROCESSING FOR IMAGE
ENHANCEMENT
Sapana S. Bagade

Vijaya K. Shandilya

M.E ,Computer Engineering,

Sipnas C.O.E.T,Amravati,
Amravati,India
sapana.bagade@gmail.com

Assistant Proffessor,Computer Science & Engg Dept,

Sipnas C.O.E.T,Amravati,
Amravati,India
vkshandilya@rediffmail.com

Abstract Digital Image Processing is a rapidly evolving field

with the growing applications in science & engineering. Image
Processing holds the possibility of developing an ultimate
machine that could perform visual functions of all living beings.
The image processing is a visual task, the foremost step is to
obtain an image i.e. image acquisition then enhancement and
finally to process.
In this paper there are details for image enhancement for the
purpose of image processing. Image enhancement is basically
improving the digital image quality. Image histogram is helpful
in image enhancement. The histogram in the context of image
processing is the operation by which the occurrences of each
intensity value in the image is shown and Histogram equalization
is the technique by which the dynamic range of the histogram of
an image is increased.

image. Therefore, the distinction of features in the scene can

be easily performed by visualization. This will augment the
efficiency of image classification and interpretation.
Generally, an image can be enhanced by spreading out the
range of scene illumination. This procedure is called contrast
stretch. If the ranges of gray values are uniformly prolonged,
the process will be called linear contrast stretch. The
disadvantage of the linear contrast stretch is that a number of
gray levels are equally assigned to the unusually appeared
gray levels as to the often appeared gray levels. This effect
still causes the ambiguous distinction of the similar features.
To overcome the mention defect, the process of histogram
equalization is applied. The process tries to assigned more
number of gray levels to the frequency appeared gray levels.
The enhanced image obtained from the global area histogram
equalization will cause an effect of intensity saturation in
darkness area and whiteness areas. The color image
enhancement will be obtained by encoding the color of red,
green and blue to three different spectral images.

Keywords- Image processing, image enhancement, image

histogram, Histogram equalization

1.

Introduction

Image processing is in many cases concerned with taking one

array of pixels as input and producing another array of pixels
as output which in some way represents an improvement to
the original array. The term Digital Image Processing
generally refers to the processing of a two-dimensional picture
by a digital computer i.e. altering an existing image in the
desired manner. For example, this processing may remove
noise, improve the contrast of the image, remove blurring
caused by movement of the camera during image acquisition,
it may correct for geometrical distortions caused by the lens.
Before going for image processing image enhancement is
necessary.

2.

Image Processing Technique

As has just been established, a number of factors can

adversely affect image quality. With the use of image
enhancement techniques, the difference in sensitivity between
image can be decreased. A number of image processing
techniques, in addition to enhancement techniques, can be
applied to improve the data usefulness. Techniques include
convolution edge detection, mathematics, filters, trend
removal, and image analysis. The various image
enhancements and image processing techniques will be
introduced in this section. Computer software programs are
available, including some or all of the following programs:

We will not be considering every image processing and

enhancement technique in this section but we will see the
enhancement of image through image histogram or better way
histogram equalization. If an image is low contrast and dark,
we wish to improve its contrast and brightness. The histogram
equalization improve all parts of the image when the

Enhancement programs make information more visible.

original image is irregularly illuminated. The enhancement

techniques are employed in order to increase the contrast of an

Histogram equalization-Redistributes the intensities

of the image of the entire range of possible intensities
(usually 256 gray-scale levels).

International Journal of Software Engineering Research & Practices Vol.1, Issue 2, April, 2011

input data value and y is the output data value. The non-linear
contrast enhancement techniques have been found to be useful
for enhancing the color contrast between the nearly classes
and subclasses of a main class.

Unsharp masking-Subtracts smoothed image from the

original image to emphasize intensity changes.

Convolution programs are 3-by-3 masks operating on pixel

neighborhoods.

Highpass filter-Emphasizes
intensity changes.

Lowpass filter-Smoothes images, blurs regions with

rapid changes

regions

with

A type of non linear contrast stretch involves scaling the input

data logarithmically. This enhancement has greatest impact on
the brightness values found in the darker part of histogram. It
could be reversed to enhance values in brighter part of
histogram by scaling the input data using an inverse log
function.

rapid

2.1 Image Enhancement Technique

Histogram equalization is another non-linear contrast

enhancement technique. In this technique, histogram of the
original image is redistributed to produce a uniform
population density. This is obtained by grouping certain
adjacent grey values. Thus the number of grey levels in the
enhanced image is less than the number of grey levels in the
original image

Image enhancement techniques improve the quality of an

image a perceived by a human. These techniques are most
useful because many images when examined on a color
display give inadequate information for image interpretation.
There is no conscious effort to improve the fidelity of the
image with regard to some ideal form of the image. There
exists a wide variety of techniques for improving image
quality. The contrast stretch, density slicing, edge
enhancement, and spatial filtering are the more commonly
used techniques. Image enhancement is attempted after the
image is corrected for geometric and radiometric distortions.
Image enhancement methods are applied separately to each
band of a multispectral image. Digital techniques have been
found to be most satisfactory than the photographic technique
for image enhancement, because of the precision and wide
variety of digital processes.

3.

Histogram

Histogram equalization is a widely used scheme for contrast

enhancement in a variety of applications due to its simple
function and effectiveness. One possible drawback of the
histogram equalization is that it can change the mean
brightness of an image significantly as a consequence of
histogram flattening. Clearly, this is not a desirable property
when preserving the original mean brightness of a given image
is necessary. As an effort to overcome such drawback for
extending the applications of the histogram equalization in
consumer electronic products, bi-histogram equalization has
been proposed by the author which is capable of preserving
the mean brightness of an image while it performs contrast
enhancement. The essence of the bi-histogram equalization is
to utilize independent histogram equalizations separately over
two subimages obtained by decomposing the input image
based on its mean. A simplified version of the bi-histogram
equalization is proposed, which is referred to as the quantized
bi-histogram equalization. The proposed algorithm provides a
much simpler hardware (H/W) structure than the bi-histogram
equalization since it is based on the cumulative density
function of a quantized image. Thus, the realization of bihistogram equalization in H/W is feasible, which leads to
versatile applications in the field of consumer electronics

Contrast
Contrast generally refers to the difference in luminance or
grey level values in an image and is an important
characteristic. It can be defined as the ratio of the maximum
intensity to the minimum intensity over an image. Contrast
ratio has a strong bearing on the resolving power and detects
ability of an image. Larger this ratio, more easy it is to
interpret the image.
Contrast Enhancement
Contrast enhancement techniques expand the range of
brightness values in an image so that the image can be
efficiently displayed in a manner desired by the analyst. The
density values in a scene are literally pulled farther apart, that
is, expanded over a greater range. The effect is to increase the
visual contrast between two areas of different uniform
densities. This enables the analyst to discriminate easily
between areas initially having a small difference in density.

3.1 What is Histogram

The histogram in the context of image processing is the
operation by which the occurrences of each intensity value in
the image is shown. Normally, the histogram is a graph
showing the number of pixels in an image at each different
intensity value found in that image. For an 8-bit grayscale
image there are 256 different possible intensities, and so the
histogram will graphically display 256 numbers showing the
distribution
of
pixels
amongst
those
grayscale
values. Histogram modification is a classical method for

Non-Linear Contrast Enhancement

In these methods, the input and output data values follow a
non-linear transformation. The general form of the non-linear
contrast enhancement is defined by y = f (x), where x is the

International Journal of Software Engineering Research & Practices Vol.1, Issue 2, April, 2011
image enhancement, especially histogram equalization.
Histogram equalization method is a self-acting process since it
does not request any information, just only the probability of
each intensity level of image. However, the enhanced image is
obtained by the global area histogram equalization will cause
an effect of intensity saturation in some areas.

means 0 , 1 , 2 , 3 , ...... , 255. That is how new intensity levels

are calculated for the previous intensity levels.
The next step is to replace the previous intensity level with the
new intensity level. This is accomplished by putting the value
of Oi in the image for all the pixels, where Oi represents the
new intensity value, whereas i represents the previous
intensity level.

3.2 What is Histogram Equalization

Histogram equalization is the technique by which the dynamic
range of the histogram of an image is increased. Histogram
equalization assigns the intensity values of pixels in the input
image such that the output image contains a uniform
distribution of intensities. It improves contrast and the goal of
histogram equalization is to obtain a uniform histogram. This
technique can be used on a whole image or just on a part of an
image.

To understand the working of the histogram equalization, take

the example of the following image: the dynamic range of
image intensities is shown by the following histogram:

Histogram equalization redistributes intensity distributions. If

the histogram of any image has many peaks and valleys, it will
still have peaks and valley after equalization, but peaks and
valley will be shifted. Because of this, "spreading" is a better
term than "flattening" to describe histogram equalization. In
histogram equalization, each pixel is assigned a new intensity
value based on its previous intensity level.
3.3 General Working
The histogram equalization is operated on an image in three
step:
1). Histogram Formation
2). New Intensity Values calculation for each Intensity Levels

Fig1: Dark image

3). Replace the previous Intensity values with the new

intensity values
For the first step see the article on histogram.
In step 2, new intensity values are calculated for each intensity
level by applying the following equation:

The meaning of Max. Intensity Levels maximum intensity

level which a pixel can get. For example, if the image is in the
grayscale domain, then the count is 255. And if the image is of
size 256x256 then, the No. of pixels is 65536. And the
expression is the bracket means that the no. of pixels having
the intensity below the output intensity level or equal to it. For
example, if we are calculating the output intensity level for 1
input intensity level, then it means that the no. of pixels in the
image having the intensity below or equal to 1 means 0 and 1.
If we are calculating the output intensity level for 5 input
intensity level, then the it means that the no. of pixels in the
image having the intensity below or equal to 5 means 0 , 1 , 2 ,
3 , 4 , 5. Thus, if we are calculating the output intensity level
for 255 input intensity level, then the it means that the no. of
pixels in the image having the intensity below or equal to 255

Fig4: High contrast image

International Journal of Software Engineering Research & Practices Vol.1, Issue 2, April, 2011
3.4 Histogram Equalization: Regional Adaptive

for the source image. Also, areas of low intensity and low
contrast in the source image were correspondingly remapped
in the reference image to areas of higher contrast and
generally overall brighter values.

The Histogram Equalization: Regional Adaptive algorithm, a

high-pass filter, enhances the contrast in an image by
reevaluating the gray-scale, or intensity, value of each pixel
based on the values of nearby pixels in the same region.

Notice that different low areas of the reference image are more
distinguishable depending on the number of rows and columns
that divide the image. The contrast changes are due to which
pixel is considered the brightest and which the darkest in a
particular region. The brightest pixel in a 1 x 1 separated
image is the brightest of the image. However, when the image
is divided into more regions, the brightest pixel in the region
gets remapped as one of the brightest pixels in the image
regardless of its absolute intensity in the image. Likewise, the
darkest pixel in the region is remapped as one of the darkest in
the image regardless of its absolute intensity.

Background
Features in some images require a larger range of intensity
values than are displayed. Histogram equalization is a method
to improve the contrast of an area in an image by distributing
an equal number of pixels across the range of intensities in the
image. This algorithm tabulates the histogram for each region,
then assigns the pixel to the new histogram level.
This algorithm acts in regions of an image, dividing the image
into m rows and n columns. Each region is the source when
remapping the histogram, adapting the value of the pixel to its
location in the histogram of the region.

The histogram equalization process can enforce certain

characteristics about the image called clipping. As the
algorithm processes the image, it counts out the number of
pixels of certain intensity. Clipping cuts that counting short; it
stores the excess pixels of a particular intensity and
redistributes that number equally among all intensities. For
instance, if a particular intensity must be clipped at 100 and
the count is 145, the algorithm redistributes 45 pixels to other
brightness. It adds to the count of each intensity level an equal
number of pixels if there are enough excess, but it attempts to
spread the excess over as many pixels as possible.

Although, depending on image type, there are some minor

variations in how this algorithm proceeds, generally the
algorithm first calculates the bin width of each region. It then
processes each region by judging each pixel's location within
this new histogram. Regardless of pixel value, the algorithm
remaps the brightest pixel in each region to the brightest value
in the histogram (i.e., 256) and remaps the darkest pixel to the
lowest value in the histogram (i.e., 0) of the pixels'
neighboring region, recording the new values as pixelintensity values. The algorithm then processes each of the
remaining regions in the original, or source, image in the same
way and builds a new, or reference, image using the new
pixel-intensity values.

Gamma correction
Gamma correction operation performs nonlinear brightness
adjustment. Brightness for darker pixels is increased, but it is
almost the same for bright pixels. As result more details are
visible.

Performing histogram equalization makes it possible to see

minor variations within portions of the reference image that
appeared nearly uniform in the source image. Arithmetically,
the process in a region is rather simple:

4.

Conclusion

Histogram equalization is powerful method for image

enhancement and it will increase the contrast of image. The
enhanced image will give the full dynamic range of histogram.
However, histogram equalization process tries to merge the
adjacent gray levels together in order to force the uniformity
of number of pixels in each appeared gray levels.
Consequently, the intensity saturation will be presented in
darkness regions and whiteness region. Histogram
equalization assigns the intensity values of pixels in the input
image such that the output image contains a uniform
distribution of intensities. It improves contrast and obtain a
uniform histogram. This technique can be used on a whole
image or just on a part of an image.

where Ni is the intensity of the ith pixel, and T is the total

number of pixels in the region.
The reference image using the new histogram is similar to the
source image; however, in areas where the source image had
similar values, the reference image is enhanced. The reference
histogram now stretches over a greater proportion of the
possible image intensities
The histogram for the source image is very compact in
structure; that is, it has a great number of darker pixels, but
very few brighter pixels. In fact, the bottom-most intensity
values make up almost all of the pixels' values in the image.
Note, however, in the histogram of the reference image, the
look-up table is more evenly spread than that of the histogram

5.

References

[1]. Bob Cromwell, "Localized Contrast Enhancement: Histogram

Equalization," paper on his web site at http://www.cromwellintl.com/3d/histogram/Index.html.

International Journal of Software Engineering Research & Practices Vol.1, Issue 2, April, 2011
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OPTICAL
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