Satellite image enhancement using an ameliorated balance contrast enhancement technique

Abstract

The quality of satellite images is frequently degraded by the low-contrast effect. Therefore, different research works have been developed to deal with this undesirable effect. Still, no conclusive verdicts have been reached and the problem remains open for research. Hence, an ameliorated balance contrast enhancement technique using a parabolic function (ABCETP) is proposed in this article to improve the quality in terms of brightness, contrast, and colors. The original BCETP works by determining a parabolic function with three coefficients. However, the proposed ABCETP works by computing a modified parabolic function with one modified and two unmodified coefficients, as well as, it utilizes two additional methods to produce adequate-quality results. The proposed ABCETP is examined with numerous real contrast-distorted images, compared against different contrast enhancement methods and the results are assessed with two specialized quality appraisal metrics. Empirical results obtained from conducting various comparisons and experiments revealed the favorability of ABCETP, wherein it outputted images with better-perceived quality and outperformed the comparative methods in several aspects.