8 March 2023 Enhancement estimation network for flexibly enhancing low-light images via lighting level estimation
Zhongshuo Zhuo, Yanwen Xing, Luqing Luo, Jing Xue, Yun Wang, Jian Liu
Author Affiliations +
Abstract

Although existing methods have achieved impressive accomplishments in the field of low-light image enhancement, the phenomenon of overenhancement remains a challenge. To address this issue, a multiport output enhancement structure combined with multiloss functions supervision is designed to obtain multiple images with different enhancement intensity. Subsequently, an enhancement estimation module is proposed to flexibly select the most suitable enhancement image from these series of enhanced images, thereby reducing overexposure. To this end, the enhancement estimation network (EENet) for enhancing low-light images is introduced. The proposed EENet enhances low-illumination images with different brightness levels more perfectly because the phenomenon of overenhancement is reduced. For qualitative comparison, the experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method enhances low-illumination images more naturally, especially for enhancing low-illumination images that have brighter illumination. For quantitative evaluation, the proposed method obtains the highest peak signal-to-noise ratio and structural similarity on the public single image contrast enhancer dataset and reconstructed low-light* dataset compared with those listed methods. In addition, the EENet was proven to outperform state-of-the-art methods in dark image face detection, indicating that the EENet has great practical potential.

© 2023 SPIE and IS&T
Zhongshuo Zhuo, Yanwen Xing, Luqing Luo, Jing Xue, Yun Wang, and Jian Liu "Enhancement estimation network for flexibly enhancing low-light images via lighting level estimation," Journal of Electronic Imaging 32(2), 023005 (8 March 2023). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.JEI.32.2.023005
Received: 21 November 2022; Accepted: 14 February 2023; Published: 8 March 2023
Advertisement
Advertisement
RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS
Get copyright permission  Get copyright permission on Copyright Marketplace
KEYWORDS
Image enhancement

Light sources and illumination

Facial recognition systems

Education and training

Control systems

Image fusion

Network architectures

Back to Top