Low-light image enhancement via pair of complementary gamma functions by fusion

Abstract

Enhanced images by the traditional gamma correction (GC) method still have low contrast within high illuminance regions. In order to enhance the visibility in dark regions and simultaneously achieve high contrast in bright regions for low-light images, this paper proposes a novel method via a pair of complementary gamma functions (PCGF) by image fusion. We first define PCGF and then show its outstanding potential for low-light image enhancement by some preliminary experimental results. In order to release its performance and verify its effectiveness, we further design a simple enhancement method for low-light images based on it by an elaborately designed fusion strategy. Two input images for fusion are derived from the enhanced image by PCGF and that by proposed sharpening method, respectively. Experiments show that our proposed method can significantly enhance the detail and improve the contrast of low-light image. The qualitative experiment results show that the proposed method is effective and the comparative quantitative assessment shows that it outperforms other state-of-the-art methods.