Range-restricted pixel difference global histogram equalization for infrared image contrast enhancement

Histogram equalization (HE)-based technology has been widely applied in infrared image contrast enhancement due to its effectiveness and simple implementation. However, HE and its variations considered the accumulation of pixels in different gray values, thus ordinarily result in artifact effects, over-enhancement and noise amplification, especially in the uniformity region. In this paper, we redefine and formulate a new HE technology to overcome the shortcomings of traditional HE technology. 2D difference information between two adjacent pixels is introduced for infrared image histogram calculation and its calculation is achieved by a reasonable difference threshold. With the purpose of adaptability to different scenes, the display range of output image is controlled by 2D difference information. To preserve detail edges, we apply adaptive plateau HE on 2D difference information-related histogram. Experiments and results show that the proposed algorithm has better scene adaptability and outperforms other compared algorithms by enhancing the contrast without introducing over-enhancement effect.