Transforming Single Photon Camera Images to Color High Dynamic Range Images

Traditional CMOS sensors suffer from restricted dynamic range and sub optimal performance under extreme lighting conditions. They are affected by electronic noise in low light conditions and pixel saturation while capturing high illumination. Recent High Dynamic Range (HDR) Imaging methods, often designed for CMOS Sensors, attempt to address these issues by fusing multiple exposures. However, they frequently introduce artifacts like ghosting and light flickering in dynamic scenarios and non-uniform signal-to-noise ratio in extreme dynamic range conditions. Recently, Single Photon Avalanche Diodes (SPADs), also known as Single Photon Camera (SPC) sensors, have surpassed CMOS sensors due to their capability to capture individual photons with high timing precision. Unlike traditional digital cameras that first convert light energy into analog electrical currents and then digitize them, SPAD sensors perform direct photon detection, making them less susceptible to extreme illumination conditions. Their distinctive non-linear response curve aids in capturing photons across both low-light and high-illumination environments, making them particularly effective for High Dynamic Range Imaging. Despite their advantages, images from SPAD Sensors are often noisy and visually unappealing. To address these challenges, we evaluate state-of-the-art architectures for converting monochromatic SPAD images into Color HDR images at various resolutions. Our evaluation involves both qualitative and quantitative assessments of these architectures, focusing on their effectiveness in each stage of the conversion process.

MIPI 2024 Challenge on Nighttime Flare Removal: Methods and Results

The increasing demand for computational photography and imaging on mobile platforms has led to the widespread development and integration of advanced image sensors with novel algorithms in camera systems. However, the scarcity of high-quality data for research and the rare opportunity for in-depth exchange of views from industry and academia constrain the development of mobile intelligent photography and imaging (MIPI). Building on the achievements of the previous MIPI Workshops held at ECCV 2022 and CVPR 2023, we introduce our third MIPI challenge including three tracks focusing on novel image sensors and imaging algorithms. In this paper, we summarize and review the Nighttime Flare Removal track on MIPI 2024. In total, 170 participants were successfully registered, and 14 teams submitted results in the final testing phase. The developed solutions in this challenge achieved state-of-the-art performance on Nighttime Flare Removal. More details of this challenge and the link to the dataset can be found at https://mipi-challenge.org/MIPI2024/.