Proceedings of 2013 2nd International Conference on Advances in Electrical Engineering (ICAEE 2013)
19-21 December, 2013, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Detailed Regions Based Medical Image Contrast
Enhancement
Md. Moniruzzaman*, Md. Shafuzzaman and Md. Foisal Hossain
Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering, Khulna University of Engineering and Technology, Bangladesh
*
mdzamankuet@gmail.com, shafuzzamankuet@gmail.com, foisalkuet@yahoo.com
Abstract— Contrast enhancement of digital images is used
to process an input image and to get output image of better
quality after processing. A widely used contrast enhancement
technique is histogram equalization (HE) technique. Although
the technique is simple and effective, it has some drawbacks. It
does not preserve the brightness of the image and also has low
value of peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR). In this paper, we
propose a new technique to enhance the contrast of an image.
The technique is detailed regions based and it can be applied
on medical images. By using matlab the proposed technique
was coded and tested. The proposed technique preserves the
brightness of the image by giving low value of average mean
brightness error (AMBE). At the same time high value of
PSNR is obtained by the proposed technique which means the
image is affected by low quality of noise.
Keywords—contrast enhancement, detailed regions,
brightness preservation, AMBE, PSNR.
I. INTRODUCTION
Digital image contrast enhancement improves the visual
quality of the image by detecting the information that was
not present or was obscured in the input image. The quality
of the enhanced image is better than the original image.
Normally to measure the quality of the enhanced image two
performance parameters – (1) average mean brightness error
(AMBE) and (2) peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), are
used. Low value of AMBE and high value of PSNR is
required for good enhancement.
As histogram of a digital image represents the frequency
of occurrence of gray-levels in the image, histogram
equalization is widely known contrast enhancement method.
HE is a simple and effective method and it also distributes
the pixels uniformly based on the cumulative value of each
pixel [1]. By applying HE technique medical images can
also be processed. In medical side x-ray images, Computed
Tomography (CT) images and Magnetic Resonance Images
(MRI) are processed by this technique. HE technique is
simple, effective and easy to calculate but it has some
drawbacks. It doesn’t give low value of AMBE and high
value of PSNR. Therefore, it fails to preserve the image
brightness and the image is also affected by noise.
Later some enhancement methods have been developed
to address the aforementioned problems. Brightness
preserving bi-histogram equalization (BBHE) [2] and equal
area dualistic sub image histogram equalization (DSIHE)
[3] are the techniques to overcome the problems introduced
in HE method. In both cases the histogram is separated into
978-1-4799-2465-3/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE
two sub-images but the separation techniques are different.
In case formal method separation is done according to the
mean of the histogram and median is used for separation in
case of DSIHE method.
To attain maximum brightness preservation, minimum
mean brightness error bi-histogram equalization
(MMBEBHE) [4] and minimum mean brightness error
dynamic histogram equalization (MMBEDHE) [5] have
been proposed. MMBEBHE decomposed the input
histogram into two sub-histograms by searching a threshold
value. MMBEBHE equalizes the histogram in such a way
that the minimum brightness difference between the input
and output image is gained. Based on the local mean values
recursive mean separate histogram equalization (RMSHE)
[6] recursively divides the histogram into several
subsections.
Due to less computational complexity the time
consuming procedure contrast limited adaptive histogram
equalization (CLAHE) [7] has been proposed which divides
the input image into blocks and then calculates the mapping
functions of those blocks. An adjustable parameter is used
in CLAHE known as ‘clipping level’. Using this parameter
the amount of contrast is restricted by CLAHE. Another
adaptive histogram equalization technique which is based
on logarithmic transform coefficient is presented in [8].
In this paper, we present an algorithm to enhance the
contrast of an image. Here we divide the image into two
subsections according to pixels of the detailed regions. By
calculating the gradient value of each pixel the detailed
regions are found. The detailed regions are usually
associated with high gradients. Then applying histogram
equalization (HE) technique in one subsection containing
the pixels of detailed regions and combining the HE result
with other subsection the enhanced image is obtained.
The paper is organized as follows. Section II presents
the proposed algorithm. Section III presents results and
comparisons of proposed method with some existing
methods. Section IV concludes the paper with references.
II. PROPOSED ALGORITHM
For a given digital image I(x, y) with gray level [0, L-1]
the proposed algorithm is described step by step-
1. Calculate the gradient value of each pixel. For this a
3*3 mask (shown in “Fig. 1”) is taken and passed over the
entire image.
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 f(x-1, y-1) f(x-1, y) f(x-1, y+1)
f(x, y-1) f(x, y) f(x, y+1)
f(x+1,y-1) f(x+1,y) f(x+1,y+1)
Fig. 1: numbering convention of 3*3 mask
Calculate row gradient GR(x, y) and column gradient
GC(x, y) at each point (x, y) using the following equations-
GR(x, y) = [{f(x-1, y+1) + 2*f(x, y+1) + f(x+1, y+1)} –
{f(x-1, y-1) + 2*f(x, y-1) + f(x+1, y-1)}] / 4
GC(x, y) = [{f(x-1, y-1) + 2*f(x-1, y) + f(x-1, y+1)} –
{f(x+1, y-1) + 2*f(x+1, y) + f(x+1, y+1)}] / 4 (2)
So finally the gradient value of each pixel is-
G(x, y) = [{GR(x, y)} 2 + {GC(x, y)} 2]1/2
2. Divide the original image into five equal sized
regions according to ascending order of the gradient
intensities. The pixels in the original image which have high
gradient values are the detailed pixels of the image.
Similarly the pixels in the original image which have low
gradient values are associated with the background of the
image. Therefore by partitioning the image according to the
ascending order of gradient intensities the detailed regions
can be obtained from the original image.
3. Now find out which regions are the detailed regions
among those five regions. Usually the detailed regions are
associated with high gradients. Therefore normally the
region-5 is the detailed region and in some cases region-4
and region-3 also contain the detailed regions with region-5.
a b
e f
Fig. 2: (a)-image of whole body bones scan and (e)-corresponding histogram. (b)-HE result and (f)-corresponding histogram. (c)-CLAHE result and (g)-
corresponding histogram. (d)-Result of proposed method and (h)-corresponding histogram.
The detailed regions can be calculated by counting the
number of pixels in each region or by applying edge
detection in each region.
4. After detecting the detailed regions, divide the
original image into two subsections according to the
detailed regions shown below-
Subsection-1: pixels of detailed regions of I(x, y).
Subsection-2: background pixels of I(x, y).
(1) 5. Apply Histogram Equalization (HE) technique in
Subsection1 using the following general HE equation-
S1 = [{(CDFV–CDFMIN)/(CDFMAX–CDFMIN) *(L-1)] (4)
Where CDFV is the cumulative value for each pixel,
CDFMIN minimum value of cumulative distribution function
and CDFMAX maximum value of cumulative distribution
(3) function of Subsection-1
6. Combine HE result (S1(x, y)) with Subsection-2 to
get the enhanced image E(x, y).
III. RESULTS AND COMPARISONS
In this section, the structure of proposed method is
compared with Histogram Equalization (HE) method and
Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram (CLAHE)
Equalization method.
“Fig. 2(a)” is a whole body bone scan image. In case of
this image region-5 captures all the details of the image.
Therefore region-5 is the detailed region. Applying
histogram equalization (HE) technique in region-5 and
combining HE result with four other regions the enhanced
image is obtained shown in “Fig. 2(d)”.
c d
g h
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a b c d

e f g h
Fig. 3: (a)-brain image and (e)-corresponding histogram. (b)-HE result and (f)-corresponding histogram. (c)-CLAHE result and (g)-corresponding histogram. (d)-
Result of proposed method and (h)-corresponding histogram.

a b c d

e f g h

i j k l

m n o p
Fig. 4: (a), (i)-chest image and hand x-ray image respectively and (e), (m)-corresponding histograms. (b), (j)-HE results and (f), (n)-corresponding histograms. (c),
(k)-CLAHE results and (g), (o)-corresponding histograms. (d), (l)-Results of proposed method and (h), (p)-corresponding histograms.

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 “Fig. 3(a)” is the brain image and in this case region-5 PSNR = 10 * log10 (MAX 2 / MSE)
does not capture all details. Here region-4 also captures
some of the details. Therefore combining region-4 and = 20 * log10 (MAX) – 10 * log10 (MSE) (7)
region-5 and then equalizing the combined regions and
adding the equalized result with the other three regions Where, x is from 0 to M-1 and y is from 0 to N-1. Max
enhanced image is obtained shown in “Fig. 3(d)”. is maximum gray level of the image. For 8 bit Max is 255.
“Fig. 4(a)” and “Fig. 4(i)” are the chest image and hand TABLE-II shows the results of MSE in case of our
x-ray image, respectively. In these images region-5 does not proposed method and HE and CLAHE methods. From the
capture all details. Both cases region-4 and region-3 also results of MSE it is observed that in all cases the
capture some of the details. Therefore combining region-3, performance of proposed method is better than the other two
region-4 and region-5 and then equalizing the combined methods.
regions and adding the equalized result with the other two
regions, enhanced images are obtained shown in “Fig. 4(d)” TABLE II. MEAN SQUARE ERROR (MSE)
and “Fig. 4(l)”.
HE CLAHE Proposed method
To compare the performance of proposed algorithm with
Histogram Equalization (HE) method and Contrast Limited Whole body bones scan 9.079*103 2.307*103 1.094*103
Adaptive Histogram Equalization method (CLAHE) we use
three parameters – (1) Average Mean Brightness Error Brain 635.449 721.241 279.949
(AMBE), (2) Mean Square Error (MSE) and (3) Peak Signal
to Noise Ratio (PSNR). Chest 1.016*103 1.749*103 816.733

Capable of maintaining the mean brightness of the input Hand x-ray 1.337*103 1.413*103 302.727
image in its output image is measured by the performance
parameter AMBE. A good enhancement should have a low TABLE-III shows the results of PSNR in case of our
value of AMBE. The AMBE is given by- proposed method and HE and CLAHE methods. From
Table-III it is observed that in all cases the results of PSNR
AMBE = |X’-Y’| (5) in case of proposed method are higher than the existing
methods.
Where, X’ and Y’ are the average intensities of input
and output images. TABLE III. PEAK SIGNAL TO NOISE RATIO (PSNR)

TABLE-I shows the results of AMBE in case of our HE CLAHE Proposed method
proposed method and HE method and CLAHE method.
From Table-I it is observed that in all cases the results of Whole body bones scan 8.55 14.50 17.74
AMBE in case of proposed method are less than the existing
methods which is required for good enhancement. Brain 20.10 19.55 23.66

TABLE I. AVERAGE MEAN BRIGHTNESS ERROR (AMBE) Chest 18.06 16.43 19.01

HE CLAHE Proposed method Hand x-ray 16.87 16.63 23.32

Whole body bones scan 71.8354 42.7318 12.6019

IV. CONCLUSION
Brain 4.2138 9.7454 3.1651 Usually in original images some of the information or
details are obscured in images. In this paper we presented a
Chest 17.0799 17.4477 12.9511 contrast enhancement technique. The goal of this technique
is to find out the obscured information from the original
Hand x-ray 28.4874 20.7290 9.9108 images. At the same time it also preserves the image
brightness by keeping low value of AMBE and also
Mean square error (MSE) and Peak signal to noise ratio maintains the quality of the image. Again it is also observed
(PSNR) is two performance tools by which the quality of an that the proposed technique yields images with natural
image can be measured. Low value of MSE is required for appearances.
good enhancement. High value PSNR indicates high quality
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