Various Image Enhancement Techniques- A Critical Review

Abstract: Image Enhancement is one of the most important and difficult techniques in image research. The aim of image enhancement is to improve the visual appearance of an image, or to provide a “better transform representation for future automated image processing. Many images like medical images, satellite images, aerial images and even real life photographs suffer from poor contrast and noise. It is necessary to enhance the contrast and remove the noise to increase image quality. One of the most important stages in medical images detection and analysis is Image Enhancement techniques which improves the quality (clarity) of images for human viewing, removing blurring and noise, increasing contrast, and revealing details are examples of enhancement operations. The enhancement technique differs from one field to another according to its objective. The existing techniques of image enhancement can be classified into two categories: Spatial Domain and Frequency domain enhancement. In this paper, we present an overview of image enhancement processing techniques in spatial domain. More specifically, we categorise processing methods based representative techniques of Image enhancement. Thus the contribution of this paper is to classify and review image enhancement processing techniques, attempt an evaluation of shortcomings and general needs in this field of active research and in last we will point out promising directions on research for image enhancement for future research.

Keywords: Frequency based domain enhancement, Image Enhancement, Spatial based domain enhancement, Histogram Equalization.