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Noise reduction in high dynamic range images

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Abstract

Multiple images with different exposures are used to produce a high dynamic range (HDR) image. Sometimes high-sensitivity setting is needed for capturing images in low light condition as in an indoor room. However, current digital cameras do not produce a high-quality HDR image when noise occurs in low light condition or high-sensitivity setting. In this paper, we propose a noise reduction method in generating HDR images using a set of low dynamic range (LDR) images with different exposures, where ghost artifacts are effectively removed by image registration and local motion information. In high-sensitivity setting, motion information is used in generating a HDR image. We analyze the characteristics of the proposed method and compare the performance of the proposed and existing HDR image generation methods, in which Reinhard et al.’s global tone mapping method is used for displaying the final HDR images. Experiments with several sets of test LDR images with different exposures show that the proposed method gives better performance than existing methods in terms of visual quality and computation time.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronic Engineering, Sogang University, 1 Sinsu-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul, 121-742, Korea

    Tae-Hong Min

  2. Department of Electronic Engineering and Interdisciplinary Program of Integrated Biotechnology, Sogang University, 1 Sinsu-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul, 121-742, Korea

    Rae-Hong Park

  3. Algorithm Lab., Digital Imaging Business, Samsung Electronics, Co., Ltd., Suwon, Gyeonggido, 443-742, Korea

    SoonKeun Chang

Authors
  1. Tae-Hong Min
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  2. Rae-Hong Park
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  3. SoonKeun Chang
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Correspondence to Rae-Hong Park.

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Min, TH., Park, RH. & Chang, S. Noise reduction in high dynamic range images. SIViP 5, 315–328 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11760-010-0203-7

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