A parallel nonlinear adaptive enhancement algorithm for low- or high-intensity color images

This article addresses the problem of color image enhancement for images with low or high intensity and poor contrast (LIPC or HIPC). A parallel nonlinear adaptive enhancement (PNAE) algorithm using information from local neighborhood is presented to resolve the problem in parallel. The PNAE algorithm consists of three steps. First, a red-green-blue (RGB) color image is converted to an intensity image, then an adaptive intensity adjustment with local contrast enhancement is parallelly performed, and finally, colors are restored. The PNAE algorithm can be adjusted to control the level of enhancement on the overall lightness and the contrast achieved at the output separately. Most of the parameters used in PNAE are robust for LIPC and HIPC color image enhancement. Experimental results show that PNAE outperforms two popular methods in both computational efficiency and overall content preservation of image while improving local contrast for LIPC and HIPC image enhancement.