Object level histogram specification for color image enhancement

One of the emerging areas in image processing is color image enhancement. It is the process of improving image quality such as human visibility, edge sharpening, improving the contrast, etc. It is mainly applicable in medical images, satellite images. An algorithm for color image enhancement has been proposed that perform enhancement in red, green, blue components separately. These components are combined together to form the output image. This process mainly consists of two stages; at first, it segments the objects in the image using gradient operator followed by morphological operations, secondly each objects are enhanced by using histogram specification followed by merging of all objects. This technique produces better result by increasing Second Derivative-like Measure of Enhancement (SDME) and well suitable for low contrast complex images.