Detail aware contrast enhancement with linear image fusion

This paper presents an approach to detail aware contrast enhancement with linear image fusion. The proposed approach is abbreviated as DACE/LIF. Two main stages are involved in the DACE/LIF approach: the conventional histogram equalization (CHE) and linear image fusion (LIF). Though the CHE has the problem of over enhancement, it is noted that the details which is not obvious in the original image are generally revealed after the CHE. Interesting enough, the details shown in the original image and in the equalized image are of a kind of complementary property. In this paper, it is called detail-complementary property (DCP) between the original image and the equalized image. The DCP suggests that the details in the original image and the equalized image may be combined to form an image with better contrast and visual quality. In the light of DCP, details are aware and the LIF is employed to combine the original image and its equalized image by the CHE. Simulation results indicate that the enhanced image by the proposed DACE/LIF approach has better visual quality than that in the original image and that by the compared HE-based approach.