DMT-Net: Deep Multiple Networks for Low-Light Image Enhancement Based on Retinex Model

Images captured under low-light conditions are typically prone to undesirable visual phenomena, particularly color distortion and additive noise, that impede the aesthetics and performance of high-level vision tasks. Therefore, developing an enhancement method is necessary to obtain visually pleasing images. This paper proposes deep multiple networks for low-light image enhancement based on the Retinex model (defined as DMT-Net), wherein each network is configured to perform its own role in the YCbCr color space. More specifically, Decoupled-Net is presented to decouple the luminance channel into reflectance and illumination components accurately using the Retinex model. Denoising-Net is connected to Decoupled-Net to eradicate additive noise in the reflectance component. Boosting-Net enhances the illumination component and reduces halo artifacts. In addition, we propose Chrominance-Net to mitigate the distortion of the Cb and Cr channels. Our study also focuses on having a suitable norm order for the loss function based on kurtosis characteristics, such that each network is properly trained to minimize the residual in the training process. Finally, the experimental results prove that our proposed method outperforms numerous other cutting-edge methods in both qualitative and quantitative terms.