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A Perceptually Inspired Method for Enhancing Contrast in Uneven Lighting Images

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Man-Machine Interactions 5 (ICMMI 2017)

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 659))

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Abstract

Images captured under uneven lighting conditions often suffer from low visual quality in dark areas. It is hard to make a good balance between improving detail visibility and suppressing over-enhancement. To cope with this, we propose a method to enhance local contrast in dark regions. Inspired by reinterpreting the Weber contrast, we treat an image as a product of two transfer functions, a luminance mapping and a contrast measure functions, and enhance an image by tuning these two functions based on the characteristics of the human visual system. The two merits of the proposed method include: (1) luminance mapping function is derived from the sensitivity of photoreceptors in retina; (2) contrast measure function is based on a neural model of the retinal receptive fields. Experiments and comparison show the proposed method outperforms the state-of-art.

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Acknowledgement

The first author is supported in part by China Scholarship Council.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Optoelectronic Information, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610054, Sichuan, China

    Tian Pu

  2. Harvard Medical School, Mass Eye and Ear, Schepens Eye Research Institute, Boston, MA, 02114, USA

    Shuhang Wang

  3. College of CCIS, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

    Patrick Wang

Authors
  1. Tian Pu
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  2. Shuhang Wang
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  3. Patrick Wang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tian Pu .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Informatics, Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland

    Aleksandra Gruca

  2. Institute of Informatics, Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland

    Tadeusz Czachórski

  3. Institute of Informatics, Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland

    Katarzyna Harezlak

  4. Institute of Informatics, Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland

    Stanisław Kozielski

  5. Institute of Informatics, Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland

    Agnieszka Piotrowska

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Pu, T., Wang, S., Wang, P. (2018). A Perceptually Inspired Method for Enhancing Contrast in Uneven Lighting Images. In: Gruca, A., Czachórski, T., Harezlak, K., Kozielski, S., Piotrowska, A. (eds) Man-Machine Interactions 5. ICMMI 2017. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 659. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67792-7_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67792-7_2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-67791-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-67792-7

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