AN ALTERNATIVE ALGORITHM FOR ADAPTIVE HISTOGRAM EQUALIZATION

Adaptive histogram equalization has become well-established as a techn ique for enhancing contrast in images. This paper investigates an alte rnative formulation of histogram equalization. An implementation of th is is presented. The resulting algorithm involves the application of a filter to a set of image fields, and the potential for filtering thes e fields differently is illustrated through the restoration of a delib erately degraded image, Hence the alternative algorithm is shown to be effective and to provide a framework for improved estimation of the o ptimal gray-level mappings over standard methods. (C) 1996 Academic Pr ess, Inc.