Computer Vision

Lecture 32:
Histograms and Point
Operations

Dr Tripty Singh
Computer Science and Enginnering
Dept. Amrita School of Computing
Histograms
 Histograms plots how many times (frequency) each
intensity value in image occurs
 Example:
 Image (left) has 256 distinct gray levels (8 bits)
 Histogram (right) shows frequency (how many times) each
gray level occurs

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Histograms
 Many cameras display real time histograms of scene
 Helps avoid taking over‐exposed pictures

 Also easier to detect types of processing previously

applied to image

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Histogram equalization

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 Histograms
Histogram Equalization is a mathematical technique to widen the dynamic
range of the histogram. Sometimes the histogram is spanned over a short
range, by equalization the span of the histogram is widened. In digital
image processing, the contrast of an image is enhanced using this very
technique.
Use of Histogram Equalization:
It is used to increase the spread of the histogram. If the histogram
represents the digital image, then by spreading the intensity values over a
large dynamic range we can improve the contrast of the image.
Algorithm:
• Find the frequency of each value represented on the horizontal axis of
the histogram i.e. intensity in the case of an image.
• Calculate the probability density function for each intensity value.
• After finding the PDF, calculate the cumulative density function for each
intensity’s frequency.
• The CDF value is in the range 0-1, so we multiply all CDF values by the
largest value of intensity i.e. 255.
• Round off the final values to integer values.
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Histograms

Intensity
values

 E.g. K = 16, 10 pixels have intensity value = 2

 Histograms: only statistical information

 No indication of location of pixels

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 0 1 1 3 4
7 2 5 5 7
6 3 2 1 1
1 4 4 2 1

A 3-bit image of size 4×5 is shown below.

Compute the histogram equalized image.
Steps:
•Find the range of intensity values.
•Find the frequency of each intensity value.
•Calculate the probability density function for each frequency.
•Calculate the cumulative density function for each frequency.
•Multiply CDF with the highest intensity value possible.
•Round off the values obtained in step-5.

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1. Overview of calculation:
2. Range of intensity values = [0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
3. Frequency of values = [1, 6, 3, 2, 3, 2, 1, 2]
4. total = 20 = 4*5
5. Calculate PDF = frequency of each intensity/Total sum of all
frequencies, for each i value of intensity
6. Calculate CDF =cumulative frequency of each intensity
7. value = sum of all PDF value (<=i)
8. Multiply CDF with 7.
9. Round off the final value of intensity.

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Range Frequency PDF CDF 7*CDF Round-off
0 1 0.0500 0.0500 0.3500 0
0.3000
1 6 0.3500 2.4500 2

0.1500
2 3 0.5000 3.5000 4

0.1000
3 2 0.6000 4.2000 4

0.1500
4 3 0.7500 5.2500 5

0.1000
5 2 0.8500 5.9500 6

0.0500
6 1 0.9000 6.3000 6

0.1000
7 2 1.0000 7.0000 7

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Interpretation:
The pixel intensity in the image has
modified.
0 intensity is replaced by 0.
1 intensity is replaced by 2.
2 intensity is replaced by 4.
3 intensity is replaced by 4.
4 intensity is replaced by 5.
5 intensity is replaced by 6.
6 intensity is replaced by 6.
7 intensity is replaced by 7.

0 2 2 Output: 4The new image

5 is as follow:

7 4 6 6 7

6 4 4 2 2

2 5 5 4 2

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Histograms
 Differentimages can have same histogram
 3 images below have same histogram

 Half of pixels are gray, half are white

 Same histogram = same statisics
 Distribution of intensities could be different
 Can we reconstructDRimage from histogram? No!
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 Histograms
 So, a histogram for a grayscale image with intensity
values in range

would contain exactly K entries

 E.g. 8‐bit grayscale image, K = 28 = 256
 Each histogram entry is defined as:

h(i) = number of pixels with intensity I for all 0 < i < K.

 E.g: h(255) = number of pixels with intensity = 255
 Formal definition

Number (size of
DRset) of pixels
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Interpreting Histograms
 Log scale makes low values more visible
Difference between darkest and lightest

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Histograms
 Histograms help detect image acquisition issues
 Problems with image can be identified on histogram
 Over and under exposure
 Brightness
 Contrast
 Dynamic Range
 Point operations can be used t o alter histogram. E.g
 Addition
 Multiplication
 Exp and Log
 Intensity Windowing (Contrast Modification)

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Image Brightness
 Brightness of a grayscale image is the average
intensity of all pixels in image

2. Divide by total number of pixels

1. Sum up all pixel intensities

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Detecting Bad Exposure using Histograms
Exposure? Are intensity values spread (good) out or
bunched up (bad)

Image

Histogram

Underexposed Properly
DR TRIPTY SINGH Overexposed 16
Exposed
Image Contrast
 The contrast of a grayscale image indicates how easily
objects in the image can be distinguished
 High contrast image: many distinct intensity values

 Low contrast: image uses few intensity values

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 Histograms and Contrast
Good Contrast? Widely spread intensity values
+ large difference between min and max intensity values

Image

Histogram

Low contrast Normal

DR contrast
TRIPTY SINGH High contrast 18
Contrast Equation?
 Many different equations for contrast exist
 Examples:

 Michalson’s equation for contrast

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Contrast Equation?
 These equations work well for simple images with 2
luminances (i.e. uniform foreground and
background)
 Does not work well for complex scenes with many

luminances or if min and max intensities are small

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 Histograms and Dynamic Range
 Dynamic Range: Number of distinct pixels in image

High Dynamic Range Low Dynamic Range Extremely low

(64 intensities) Dynamic Range
(6 intensity
values)
 Difficult to increase image dynamic range (e.g. interpolation)
 HDR (12‐14 bits) capture typical,DRthen down‐sample
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High Dynamic Range Imaging
 High dynamic range means very bright and very dark
parts in a single image (many distinct values)
 Dynamic range in photographed scene may exceed

number of available bits to represent pixels

 Solution:
 Capture multiple images at different exposures
 Combine them using image processing

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Detecting Image Defects using Histograms
 No “best” histogram shape, depends on application
 Image defects
 Saturation: scene illumination values outside the sensor’s range are set to
its min or max values => results in spike at ends of histogram
 Spikes and Gaps in manipulated images (not original). Why?

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 Image Defects: Effect of Image Compression
 Histograms show impact of image compression
 Example: in GIF compression, dynamic range is reduced to
only few intensities (quantization)

Original
Histogram

Original Histogram after GIF conversion

Image

Fix? Scaling image by 50% and

Interpolating values recreates
some lost colors
But GIF artifacts still visible
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Effect of Image Compression
 Example: Effect of JPEG compression on line graphics
 JPEG compression designed for color images

Original histogram has only

2 intensities (gray and
white)

JPEG image appears dirty,

fuzzy and blurred

Its Histogram contains gray values

not in original

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Computing Histograms

Receives 8-bit image,

Will not change it

Create array to store

histogram computed

Get width and height of

image

Iterate through image

pixels, add each
intensity to appropriate
histogram bin

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 ImageJ Histogram Function
 ImageJ has a histogram function
( getHistogram( ) )
 Prior program can be simplified if we use it

Returns histogram as an
array of integers

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 Large Histograms: Binning
 High resolution image can yield very large histogram
 Example: 32‐bit image = 2 32 = 4,294,967,296 columns

 Such a large histogram impractical to display

 Solution? Binning!
 Combine ranges of intensity values into histogram columns

Number (size of set) of pixelsDR TRIPTY Pixel’s intensity is

such that
SINGH 28
between ai and ai+1
 Calculating Bin Size
 Typically use equal sized bins
 Bin size?

 Example: To create 256 bins from 14‐bit image

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 Binned Histogram


Create array to store

histogram computed

Calculate which bin to

add pixel’s intensity

Increment corresponding
histogram

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 Color Image Histograms

Two types:
1. Intensity histogram:
 Convert color

image to gray scale

 Display histogram

of gray scale
2. Individual Color
Channel Histograms:
3 histograms (R,G,B)

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Color Image Histograms

 Both types of histograms provide useful information about

lighting, contrast, dynamic range and saturation effects
 No information about the actual color distribution!
 Images with totally different RGB colors can have same R, G
and B histograms
 Solution to this ambiguity is the Combined Color Histogram.
 More on this later

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 Cumulative Histogram
 Useful for certain operations (e.g. histogram equalization) later
 Analogous t o the Cumulative Density Function (CDF)
 Definition:

 Recursive definition

 Monotonically increasing

Last entry of Cum. Total number of

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pixels in image 33
histogram
 Point Operations
 Point operations changes a pixel’s intensity value according t o some
function (don’t care about pixel’s neighbor)

 Also called a homogeneous operation

 New pixel intensity depends on
 Pixel’s previous intensity I(u,v)
 Mapping function f( )
 Does not depend on
 Pixel’s location (u,v)
 Intensities of neighboring
pixels

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Some Homogeneous Point Operations
 Addition (Changes brightness)

 Multiplication (Stretches/shrinks image contrast range)

 Real‐valued functions

 Quantizing pixel values

 Global thresholding
 Gamma correction
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Point Operation Pseudocode
 Input: Image with pixel intensities I(u,v) defined on
[1 .. w] x [1 .. H]
 Output: Image with pixel intensities I’(u,v)

for v = 1 .. h
for u = 1 .. w
set I(u, v) = f (I(u,v))

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Non‐Homogeneous Point Operation
 New pixel value depends on:
 Old value + pixel’s location
(u,v)

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Clamping
 Deals with pixel values outside displayable range
 If (a > 255) a = 255;
 If (a < 0) a = 0;
 Function below will clamp (force) all values to fall
within range [a,b]

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Example: Modify Intensity and Clamp
 Point operation: increase image contrast by 50%
then clamp values above 255

Increase contrast
by 50%

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 Inverting Images

 2 steps
1. Multiple intensity by ‐1
2. Add constant (e.g. amax)
to put result in range
[0,amax ]

Implemented as
ImageJ method
invert( ) Original Inverted Image
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 Image Negatives (Inverted Images)
 Image negatives useful for enhancing white
or grey detail embedded in dark regions of an
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing

image
 Note how much clearer the tissue is in the negative
image of the mammogram below

Original Negative
s = 1.0 - r
Image Image
(2002)

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Thresholding


• Implemented as imageJ method

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Thresholding Example

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Thresholding and Histograms
 Example with ath =
128

 Thresholding splits histogram, merges halves into a0 a1

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 Basic Grey Level Transformations
3 most common gray level transformation:
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing

 Linear
 Negative/Identity
 Logarithmic
 Log/Inverse log
 Power law
 n t h power/n t h root
(2002)

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 Logarithmic Transformations
 Maps narrow range of input levels => wider
range of output values
Inverse log transformation does opposite

transformation
The general form of the log transformation is
New pixel value s = c * log(1 + r) Old pixel value

Log transformation of Fourier transform shows more detail

s = log(1 + r)

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 Power Law Transformations
Power law transformations have the form
Power
s=c*r γ
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing

Old pixel value

New pixel value
Constant

 Map narrow
range of dark input
values into wider
range of output values
or vice versa
(2002)

 Varying γ gives aDR TRIPTY SINGH 47

 Power Law Example
Original

 Magnetic
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing

Resonance (MR) image s = r 0.6

of fractured
human spine

s = r 0.4
 Different power
values highlight
different details
(2002)

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Intensity Windowing
 A clamp operation, then linearly stretching image
intensities to fill possible range
 To window an image in [a,b] with max intensity M

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Intensity Windowing Example

Contrasts
easier to see

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Point Operations and Histograms
 Effect of some point operations easier to observe on histograms
 Increasing brightness
 Raising contrast
 Inverting image
 Point operations only shift, merge histogram entries
 Operations that merge histogram bins are irreversible

Combining histogram
operation easier to
observe on histogram

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 Automatic Contrast Adjustment


Original intensity range

If amin = 0 and amax = 255

New intensity range

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Effects of Automatic Contrast Adjustment

Linearly stretching
range causes gaps
in histogram

Original Result of automatic

Contrast Adjustment
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Modified Contrast Adjustment


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 Histogram Equalization
 Adjust 2 different images to make their histograms
(intensity distributions) similar
 Apply a point operation that changes histogram of

modified image into uniform distribution

Histogram

Cumulative
Histogram

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 Histogram Equalization
Spreading out the frequencies in an image (or
equalizing the image) is a simple way to improve dark
or washed out images
Can be expressed as a transformation of histogram
 rk: input intensity
 sk: processed intensity
 k: the intensity
range (e.g 0.0 – 1.0)
processed intensity sk  T (rk input intensity

)
Intensity range
DR TRIPTY(e.g
SINGH
0 – 255) 56
 Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing
(2002)

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Equalization Transformation Function

57
 Equalization Transformation Functions
Different equalization function (1‐4) may be used
Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing
(2002)

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 Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing
(2002)

Equalization Examples

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1

59
 Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing
(2002)

Equalization Examples

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2

60
 Images taken from Gonzalez & Woods, Digital Image Processing
(2002)

Equalization Examples

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61
4
3