Retinex-Based Perceptual Contrast Enhancement in Images Using Luminance Adaptation

In this paper, we propose retinex-based perceptual contrast enhancement in images using luminance adaptation. Strong illumination causes the loss of local details in an image. We adopt luminance adaptation and multi-scale retinex (MSR) to successfully remove the illumination effect in an image while enhancing details. First, we estimate the illumination component in an image by adaptive smoothing and get luminance just-noticeable difference (JND) from it using luminance adaptation. Then, we calculate an illumination weakening factor from luminance JND and conduct MSR based on it to enhance details. Finally, we perform contrast enhancement using adaptive gamma correction with weighted distribution. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method successfully enhances details in an image while preventing over and under enhancement as well as outperforms state of the arts in terms of various quantitative measurements.