Modified Contrast Enhancement Algorithm and Its Hardware Design for Real-Time Applications

In the paper, a modified histogram equalization for contrast enhancement of monochrome image/frame is proposed. We use the sampled and quantized image to create the look-up table and apply the table to obtain the enhanced image. The features of the modified scheme are as follows: 1) As compared with the original scheme by the MATLAB simulation, the difference between the results of modified and original schemes is tiny and indistinguishable by our eyes. 2) For requirement of real-time processing, the proposed sampling and quantization technique is more suitable for pipelining in hardware design. The proposed design is adequate for most of surveillance system even if the frame size of video is larger than HDTV.