A novel optimally gamma corrected intensity span maximization approach for dark image enhancement

In this paper, a highly adaptive swarm intelligence inspired optimally gamma corrected intensity coverage maximization approach has been proposed for quality enhancement of dark and low contrast remotely sensed images. Various image enhancement techniques have been proposed till date, but in case of dark images, most of them are suffering from saturation effects in higher intensity regions along with information loss due to it; and hence, not appreciated very well. Also, most of the available techniques are unable to utilize the entire allowable intensity range, fully and fruitfully. Here, an optimal gamma value set which itself has been derived through optimal weighting of linearly stretched and interim equalized image so that the allowed range can be maximally occupied. Also, highly qualified objective function has been drafted for employing swarm intelligence over a two-dimensional search space. The proposed approach is found highly capable to recover the vast amount of information, along with contrast and sharpness enhancement when compared with other state-of-the-art methodologies, for remotely-sensed as well as general images.