Interactive h & togram equal & ation

Adaptive Histogram Equalization (AHE) often introduces artifacts, for example at the edges of relatively homogeneous regions. In this contribution we propose a variation of global histogram equalization, that avoids these artifacts. The method which is called Interactive Histogram Equalization (IHE) is based on a simpler calculation than AHE. IHE can be a serious competitor for the established contrast enhancement technique Intensity Windowing (IW). It provides insight into the effect of histogram equalization and can also be used as a research tool. Using segmentation as a preprocessing step, IHE can be made adaptive by applying histogram equalization to each segment separately. This version of IHE is called Histogram Equalization On Segments (HEOS).