Image Enhancement in Spatial

Domain-II
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Image Histograms
The histogram of an image shows us the
distribution of grey levels in the image
Massively useful in image processing,
especially in segmentation
Frequencies

Grey Levels
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Image Histograms
• The histogram of a digital image, f, (with intensities [0,L-1])
is a discrete function
h(rk) = nk
• Where rk is the kth intensity value and nk is the number of
pixels in f with intensity rk
• Normalizing the histogram is common practice – Divide the
components by the total number of pixels in the image –
Assuming an MxN image, this yields
p(rk) = nk/MN for k=0,1,2,....,L-1 – p(rk) is, basically, an estimate
of the probability of occurrence of intensity level rk in an image
Σ p(rk) = 1
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Uses for Histogram Processing
• Image enhancements
• Image statistics
• Image compression
• Image segmentation
• Simple to calculate in software
• Economic hardware implementations
– Popular tool in real-time image processing
• A plot of this function for all values of k provides a global
description of the appearance of the image (gives useful information
for contrast enhancement)
• Histograms commonly viewed in plots as
h(rk) = nk versus rk
p(rk) = nk /MN versus rk
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)
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Histogram Examples
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)
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Histogram Examples (cont…)
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)
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Histogram Examples (cont…)
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)
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Histogram Examples (cont…)
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)
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Histogram Examples (cont…)
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Histogram Examples (cont…)
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Histogram Examples (cont…)
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Histogram Examples (cont…)
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Histogram Examples (cont…)
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Histogram Examples (cont…)
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Histogram Examples (cont…)
A selection of images and
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

their histograms
Notice the relationships
between the images and
their histograms
Note that the high contrast
image has the most
evenly spaced histogram
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Contrast Stretching
We can fix images that have poor contrast
by applying a pretty simple contrast
specification
The interesting part is how do we decide on
this transformation function?
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Histogram Equalisation
• Histogram equalization is a process for increasing the
contrast in an image by spreading the histogram out to be
approximately uniformly distributed
• The gray levels of an image that has been subjected to
histogram equalization are spread out and always reach
white
– The increase of dynamic range produces an increase in
contrast
• For images with low contrast, histogram equalization has
the adverse effect of increasing visual graininess
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Histogram Equalisation
• The intensity transformation function we are constructing
is of the form
s=T(r) 0 ≤ r ≤ L−1

• An output intensity level s is produced for every pixel in

the input image having intensity r
• We assume
– T(r) is monotonically increasing in the interval 0≤ r ≤ L-1
– 0 ≤ Τ(r) ≤ L-1 for 0 ≤ r ≤ L-1
• If we define the inverse
r=T^−1(s) 0 ≤ s ≤ L−1
• Then T(r) should be strictly monotonically increasing
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Histogram Equalisation
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Histogram Equalisation
• Histogram equalization requires construction of a
transformation function sk

• where rk is the kth gray level, nk is the number of pixels

with that gray level, MxN is the number of pixels in the
image, and k=0,1,...,L-1
• This yields an s with as many elements as the original
image’s histogram (normally 256 for our test images)
• The values of s will be in the range [0,1]. For
constructing a new image, s would be scaled to the range
[1,256]
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Histogram Equalisation
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Histogram Equalisation
Spreading out the frequencies in an image (or equalising the image) is
a simple way to improve dark or washed out images
The formula for histogram equalisation is given where
– rk: input intensity
– sk: processed intensity
– k: the intensity range
(e.g 0.0 – 1.0)
s T(r )
k k
– nj: the frequency of intensity j k
– n: the sum of all frequencies p (r ) r j
j1
The transformation function in the next slide is
k n

Obtained by applying the RHS formula to the j
Original image in the next side.
j 1 n
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Equalisation Transformation Function
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

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Equalisation Examples
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Equalisation Transformation Functions

The functions used to equalise the images in

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

the previous example

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

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Equalisation Examples
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Equalisation Transformation Functions

The functions used to equalise the images in

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

the previous example

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Equalisation Examples (cont…)
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Equalisation Examples (cont…)
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Equalisation Transformation Functions

The functions used to equalise the images in

Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing (2002)

the previous examples