Low Light Image Contrast Enhancement using Blending of Histogram Equalization Based Methods DSIHE and MMBEBHE

Image contrast is the quantity of color variation that exists within the features of the image and the surrounding objects. The contrast enhancement process increases the brightness levels of the image overall. Low light image has its consequences of poor visibility and lesser dynamic range. The very first method of contrast enhancement is Histogram-Equalization (HE). As per the adaptive nature of science various new methods of contrast enhancement have been discovered where Histogram-Equalization is still been used with some variations in it, being an old method Histogram-Equalization still produces a good results.The flaw of HE is that the brightness level of an image increases in such a way that it creates unpleasant effect in certain cases and doesn’t preserve the average information content(AIC) of the image as well. There are numerous more advanced versions of histogram equalization(HE) methods which take care of issues related to brightness preservation and preservation of image details. The paper primarily looks into the study of DSIHE and MMBEBHE methods and the image fusion of these two methods based on experimental studies of different image quality metrics such as BRISQUE Blind / Referenceless Image Spatial Quality Evaluator and Entropy which gives better results compared to the stand alone methods with reference to both contrast-enhancement and brightness preservation.