A successive mean splitting algorithm for contrast enhancement and dynamic range reduction

This paper presents a successive mean splitting algorithm for both contrast enhancement and dynamic range reduction of digital images. The proposed algorithm is an extension to the recently published successive mean quantization transform (SMQT) for contrast enhancement. We explore the conditions under which the proposed algorithm is "optimal". We also discuss the relationship between the proposed algorithm and the moment preserving quantization (MPQ) algorithms, especially the absolute moment block truncation coding (AMBTC). We observe that AMBTC can be regarded as a special case of the proposed algorithm. Therefore, the proposed algorithm also has the moment preserving property.