Patent ID: 8639056

Claim:
A method for enhancing contrast of an image comprising: accessing at least one original image; generating a multi-scale signal representation of the at least one original image having an integral number of levels; processing the at least one original image responsive to the multi-scale representation to generate at least one enhanced image; and generating a pyramid representation of the at least one original image to form the multi-scale signal representation of the at least one original image; wherein a bandpass pyramid methodology is employed to generate the pyramid representation, the pyramid representation is a Laplacian pyramid I k , where k={1, . . . , K} and K is the number of levels in the Laplacian pyramid; wherein a contrast boost pyramid B k is generated, the contrast boost pyramid being a function that changes the Laplacian pyramid non-linearly when applied thereto; wherein a power function is generated to generate the contrast boost pyramid, the power function being expressed as { B k ⁡ ( i , j ) = 1 k = K B k ⁡ ( i , j ) = (  I k ⁡ ( i , j )  α ) β - 1 k = { 1 , … ⁢ , K - 1 } wherein shape controller α is in the range [0,1] and boost intensity β is a positive number in the range [0,2].