2016 IEEE Students' Conference on Electrical, Electronics and Computer Science
Brightness Preserving Contrast Enhancement of
Medical Images Using Adaptive Gamma Correction
and Homomorphic Filtering
Mayank Tiwari
Department of Mathematics
PDPM Indian Institute of Information Technology Design
And Manufacturing Jabalpur M.P., India
mayantiwariggits@gmail.com
Abstract— In this paper we propose an efficient method to
enhance contrast of medical images. Image contrast enhancement
is a pre-processing step that improves efficiency of other image
dealing applications such as pattern recognition and computer
vision. The proposed method enhances contrast and preserves
brightness of given image using the gamma correction and
homomorphic filtering. This method uses two step processing, in
first step global contrast of image is enhanced using the gamma
correction and weighted probability distribution of luminance
pixels and then in second step homomorphic filtering is used for
image sharpening, in order to preserve image brightness this
filtering if followed by image normalization. Experiments results
show that the proposed method is able to enhance contrast of
medical images without much affecting its brightness. This makes
the proposed algorithm to be a flexible tool for medical image
enhancement.
Keywords— medical image enhancement, histogram
equalization, adaptive gamma correction, homomorphic filtering,
contrast enhancement, brightness preservation
I. INTRODUCTION
Insufficient contrast in medical images reduces the ability
of observer in analyzing the image and in many cases this may
produce difficulties in subsequent processing. In the available
literature we are giving introduction of various methods that are
used for medical image contrast enhancement.
Histogram Equalization (HE) is one of the simplest and
effective techniques to perform contrast enhancement. The
main reason behind popularity of HE are (i) its simplicity of
implementation and (ii) computationally less expensiveness
than other methods. In HE we reduce the number of gray levels
by combining two or more less frequent neighboring gray
levels (having small probabilities) in one gray level; also we
stretch high frequent intensities over high range of gray levels
to achieve comparatively more flat histogram. This flattening
causes the overall enhancement of contrast of the input image.
To overcome above mentioned limitations of the traditional
HE method and make it more flexible, a number of HE based
methods proposed by various groups of researchers. A standout
amongst the most significant contributions commitments in this
line was Adaptive Histogram Equalization proposed by
Hummel [1], Ketcham [2], and Pizer [3]. Here shows that for
good contrast enhancement each pixel should be mapped to
intensity proportional to its rank in the pixels surrounding it. distribution of luminance pixels and then in second step
The AHE method has produced excellent results in enhancing
the contrast of an image but in many cases this contrast
enhancement leads to enhancement of noise in some visually
978-1-4673-7918-2/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
Bhupendra Gupta
Department of Mathematics
PDPM Indian Institute of Information Technology Design
And Manufacturing Jabalpur M.P., India
gupta.bhupendra@gmail.com
important area of the image. Sometimes this noise may degrade
the quality of the processed image and this leads to loss of
information contained in the image. To reduce the noise in the
processed image K. Zuiderveld [4] introduces a new and
effective method named Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram
Equalization (CLAHE). Later various researcher proposed
variants of CLAHE, few of them are discussed in [5], [6], [7],
[8].
An effective technique Adaptive Unsharp Masking (US)
was proposed by Polesel et al. [9]. This technique employs an
adaptive filter that control the contribution of the sharpening
path in such a way that contrast enhancement occurs in high
detail areas and little or no image sharpening occurs in smooth
areas [9]. This technique is effective but in certain cases for
example in medical images it is unable to detect low contrast
edges present in images. All the above mentioned methods
improve image contrast but they have a common drawback that
they are not able to preserve image brightness.
Here we propose a method named `Brightness Preserving
Contrast Enhancement of Medical Images Using Adaptive
Gamma Correction and Homomorphic Filtering' (AGC-FIL)
for medical images. In proposed method, we initially enhance
global contrast of the given medical image using our recently
proposed `adaptive gamma correction' [10] framework (in this
work we are applying the `adaptive gamma correction' [10] for
gray scale medical images). After that we use homomorphic
filtering for image sharpening and then to minimize the
difference between input and processed image mean brightness,
we normalize it.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section II
describes in detail the proposed method AGC-FIL. Some
experimental results are shown in Section III and a short
concluding remark is given in Section IV.
II. ADAPTIVE GAMMA CORRECTION AND HOMOMORPHIC
FILTERING
In this section we will completely describe proposed
method Brightness Preserving Contrast Enhancement of
Medical Images Using Adaptive Gamma Correction and
Homomorphic Filtering (AGC-FIL). Our method has two step
processing, in first step global contrast of image is enhanced
using the gamma correction and weighted probability
homomorphic filtering is used for image sharpening, in order
to preserve image brightness this filtering if followed by image
normalization. Figure 1 shows block diagram of proposed
method.
Figure 1 shows functional block diagram of proposed method AGC-FIL
A. Adaptive Gamma Correction
The proposed method initially enhances global contrast of
the given medical image. For this global contrast enhancement
we apply `adaptive gamma correction' [10]. This is an
efficient method for contrast enhancement of all type of
images. In the proposed work we are applying it on gray scale
medical images. For understanding of detailed working of this
method one can refer [10].
B. Homomorphic Filtering
Although the `adaptive gamma correction' is an efficient
method for enhancement of contrast of all type of images. For
images having very poor contrast and complicated structured
background such as medical images, sometimes this contrast
enhancement leads to enhancement of noise in some visually
important areas; hence to reduce the content of noise in
enhanced image we are applying homomorphic filtering.
Homomorphic filtering is a well known method used to
enhance or restore the degraded images having uneven
illumination. This technique uses illumination-reflectance
model in its operation. This model consider that, the image is
been characterized by two primary components. The first
component is the amount of source illumination incident on the
scene being viewed i(x, y). The second component is the
reflectance component of the object on the scene r(x, y). The
image f(x, y) is then defined as:
f ( x, y ) = r ( x, y ).i ( x, y ) ,
In this model, the intensity of i(x, y) changes slower than
r(x, y). Therefore, i(x, y) is considered to have more low
frequency components than r(x, y). Using this fact,
homomorphic filtering technique aims to reduce the
significance of i(x, y) by reducing the low frequency
components of the image. This can be achieved by executing
the filtering process in frequency domain. In order to process
an image in frequency domain, the image needs first to be
transformed from spatial domain to frequency domain. This can
be done by using transformation functions, such as Fourier
transform. However, before the transformation is taking place,
logarithm function has been used to change the multiplication
operation of r(x,y) with i(x,y) in equation (1) into addition
operation [11]. The Figure 2 shows flow chart of homomorphic
filtering.
Figure 2 shows flow chart of homomorphic filtering
C. Image Normlization
For few image dealing applications it is required to preserve
the mean brightness in the processed image. In order to make
the mean brightness difference (in between input and processed
image) as low as possible, after applying homomorphic
filtering, we apply image normalization using the following
formula:
X MI
g ( x, y ) = f ( x, y ) , (2)
X MO
where X MI and X MO are mean brightness of input image
and image produced after homomorphic filtering respectively.
The Algorithm 1 shows working of the proposed method.
III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
(1) In this section, we demonstrate the performance of the
proposed method AGC-FIL in comparison with some existing
HE based contrast enhancement methods, like HE, AHE, US
(Unsharp Masking) and CLAHE.
In the Figure 3, we are showing enhancement by different
methods on `MRI-of-knee-univ-mich' image.
From the results of Figure 3, it is clear that other HE based
methods does not work well when the image contains regions
that are significantly brighter or darker than other parts of the
image, these regions cannot be well enhanced by some HE
based methods including HE, AHE and CLAHE. If we check
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results of our method AGC-FIL from others then we come to a TABLE I
conclusion that AGC-FIL produces visually better results than ABSOLUTE MEAN BRIGHTNESS ERROR (AMBE)
other methods. Image Name HE AHE CLAHE US Proposed
angiography_live_img 9.7786 21.7355 2.3468 3.4717 0.5817
breast_digital_Xray 43.7561 74.8188 4.509 4.8959 0.2375
chest-xray-vandy 14.517 28.0517 7.9711 2.1649 3.6062
ctskull-256 7.6238 21.6736 2.3789 3.5041 0.3169
headCT_Vandy 103.5914 93.823 17.7372 1.3989 6.7609
kidney_original 1.7982 24.226 2.0247 4.4127 0.4556
lung 88.8697 84.4254 15.6432 4.1676 3.7063
MRI-of-knee-Univ- 15.27 24.9845 6.9713 7.564 0.3512
Mich
MRI-spine1-Vandy 48.4477 58.4331 7.7551 0.6039 0.8972
Average 37.0725 48.0190 7.4819 3.5759 1.8792

Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) is widely used matrix

which is used to measure contrast enhancement [14] [18].
Greater PSNR values indicate better the image quality [18]. To
calculate PSNR between two images (each image is having L
discrete gray levels in the range { X 0 , X 1 ,....., X L −1 }),
mathematical expression is given as:
 ( L − 1) 2 
PSNR = 10 log10  , (4)
 MSE 
where MSE is Mean Squared Error and it is defined as:
M N 2
1
  | X (i, j ) − Y (i, j ) |
Figure 3 shows results produced by various methods on `MRI-of-knee-univ-
mich' image. Here (a) is HE, (b) is AHE, (c) is CLAHE, (d) is US and (e) is MSE = , (5)
AGC-FIL. MN i −1 j −1

where X(i; j) and Y (i; j) denotes intensity at location (i; j) in

In the Figure 4, we are showing effectiveness of our method the input and processed image respectively.
in enhancement of visual details on all medical images used by
us in the proposed work. TABLE II
PEAK SIGNAL TO NOISE RATIO (PSNR)
A. Image Quality Assessment Image Name HE AHE CLAHE US Proposed
angiography_live_img
We compare performance of proposed method with those of 17.759 16.2921 38.1259 19.1712 31.4172
several existing method for image contrast enhancement. For breast_digital_Xray
13.8595 9.5487 33.9701 15.5702 33.8869
simulation we use several gray scale standard medical images. chest-xray-vandy
12.4386 9.5915 24.3606 22.3595 24.6945
We are showing results for 9 medical images, these images ctskull-256
20.1736 15.7561 34.0522 19.1445 30.2579
include images of [12] provided online at [13]. headCT_Vandy
5.4443 5.6926 20.4021 23.1626 22.8091
The Table I shows results of Absolute Mean Brightness kidney_original
19.6403 15.5231 30.1699 18.1509 29.187
Error (AMBE). AMBE is used to calculate difference in mean lung
brightness between two images. Mathematical expression to 6.9657 6.7347 21.2564 17.2236 24.4372
MRI-of-knee-Univ-
calculate AMBE between two images is given as: Mich 13.8188 10.0856 26.089 17.8122 26.3135
MRI-spine1-Vandy
AMBE =| X M − YM | , (3)
Average
12.5381 10.5077 24.0993 28.8546 30.3645
13.626 11.081 28.058 20.160 28.151
where X M and YM are mean brightness of input and
processed image respectively.
Based on results of Table II, a careful examination of the
Based on results of Table I, we observe that AGC-FIL has PSNR values reveals that our method produces comparatively
least values in 7 images as compared to other methods. Further better PSNR values from that of HE, AHE, CLAHE and US.
if we look at last row of Table I, which shows average results By this we come to a conclusion that AGC-FIL is a good
of AMBE then we find then AGC-FIL has least average AMBE method for contrast enhancement (as higher PSNR value
values among other methods. This shows that on an average indicates better contrast enhancement [14]-[18]) with
basis the proposed method is able to maintain mean brightness
maximum brightness preservation (less AMBE values shows
in the processed image.
better brightness preservation [14]) for all type of medical
images.

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Figure 4 shows results produced by the proposed method on given set of
images; here first column shows input image and second column shows
processed image by the proposed method.
IV. CONCLUSION
We proposed an efficient method to enhance contrast as
well as to preserve brightness of medical images. This method
uses two step processing, in first step global contrast of image
is enhanced using adaptive gamma correction and then in
second step homomorphic filtering is used for image
sharpening, in order to preserve image brightness this filtering
if followed by image normalization. Experimental results show
that the proposed method produces images that have sufficient
contrast with good interpretation of local details. Also the
proposed method is able to minimize mean brightness error in
SCEECS 2016
the processed image more accurately than other contrast
enhancement methods.
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