Ho-Hyoung CHOI and Byoung-Ju YUN^1*

Department of Mobile Communication Engineering, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 702-701, Republic of Korea
¹School of Electronics Engineering, IT College, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 702-701, Republic of Korea

(Received May 9, 2011; Accepted August 8, 2011)

In image capture, a bad illumination condition has an influence on the image quality, especially contrast of the dark and bright region. The captured image is needed to enhance the contrast. In order to do this, the conventional methods used the general image formation model. However, these methods have somewhat problems as well known. This paper presents a contrast enhancement method using an advanced image formation model in which an image is divided into three components: global illumination, local illumination, and reflectance. The experimental results show that the proposed method yield better performance of color correction over the conventional method.

Key words: advanced image formation model, global illumination, local illumination, reflectance, adaptive smoothing method, power function, dominant color, graying-out

^*E-mail address: bjisyun@ee.knu.ac.kr