A picture quality correction circuit is provided which performs contour correction by grasping features of an input video signal accurately. The correction circuit has a filter circuit for extracting contour components in an inputted video signal, a contour component nonlinear processor for changing amplitudes of the contour components extracted by the filter circuit, an adder for adding outputs of the contour component nonlinear processor and the input video signal, a histogram detection circuit for detecting a histogram of the contour components extracted by the filter circuit, and a control circuit for controlling contour emphasis quantities for the contour component nonlinear processor in accordance with the results of detection by the histogram detection circuit.