Gradient-Based Low-Light Image Enhancement

A low-light image enhancement is a highly demanded image processing technique, especially for consumer digital cameras and cameras on mobile phones. In this paper, a gradient-based low-light image enhancement algorithm is proposed. The key is to enhance the gradients of dark region, because the gradients are more sensitive for human visual system than absolute values. In addition, we involve the intensity-range constraints for the image integration. By using the intensity-range constraints, we can integrate the output image with enhanced gradients preserving the given gradient information while enforcing the intensity range of the output image within a certain intensity range. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed gradient-based low-light image enhancement can effectively enhance the low-light images.