Human Visual System-aware Dimming Method Combining Pixel Compensation and Histogram Specification for TFT-LCDs

In thin-film transistor liquid-crystal displays (TFT-LCDs), which are most commonly used in mobile devices, the backlight accounts for about 70% of the power consumption. Therefore, most low-power-related studies focus on realizing power savings through backlight dimming. Image compensation is performed to mitigate the visual distortion caused by the backlight dimming. Therefore, popular techniques include pixel compensation for brightness recovery and contrast enhancement, such as histogram equalization. However, existing pixel compensation techniques often have limitations with respect to blur owing to the pixel saturation phenomenon, or because contrast enhancement cannot adequately satisfy the human visual system (HVS). To overcome these, in this study, we propose a novel dimming technique to achieve both power saving and HVS-awareness by combining the pixel compensation and histogram specifications, which convert the original cumulative density function (CDF) by designing and using the desired CDF of an image. Because the process of obtaining the desired CDF is customized to consider image characteristics, histogram specification is found to achieve better HVS-awareness than histogram equalization. For the experiments, we employ the LIVE image database, and we use the structural similarity (SSIM) index to measure the degree of visual satisfaction. The experimental results show that the proposed technique achieves up to 15.9% increase in the SSIM index compared with existing dimming techniques that use pixel compensation and histogram equalization in the case of the same low-power ratio. Further, the results indicate that it achieves improved HVS-awareness and increased power saving concurrently compared with previous techniques. Keywords: TFT-LCDs, human visual system, low power, backlight dimming, histogram specification, pixel compensation, cumulative density function.