As an efficient image contrast enhancement (CE) tool, adaptive gamma
correction (AGC) was previously proposed by relating gamma parameter with
cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the pixel gray levels within an
image. ACG deals well with most dimmed images, but fails for globally bright
images and the dimmed images with local bright regions. Such two categories of
brightness-distorted images are universal in real scenarios, such as improper
exposure and white object regions. In order to attenuate such deficiencies,
here we propose an improved AGC algorithm. The novel strategy of negative
images is used to realize CE of the bright images, and the gamma correction
modulated by truncated CDF is employed to enhance the dimmed ones. As such,
local over-enhancement and structure distortion can be alleviated. Both
qualitative and quantitative experimental results show that our proposed method
yields consistently good CE results