An Adaptive Low-illumination Image Enhancement Algorithm based on Weighted Least Squares Optimization

Abstract An adaptive low-illumination image enhancement algorithm based on the weighted least squares optimization is proposed to solve the difficulty of detailed feature recognition in low-illumination images that collected by visible light imaging equipment. First, the image is converted from RGB channel to LAB channel. Second, we use an edge-preserving smoothing operator based on the weighted least squares optimization to coarsen smooth base layer and extract multi-scale details in brightness channel. Then, an adaptive weight is proposed and applied to the weighted fusion of smooth base and detail features. Finally, the Retinex enhancement is performed to obtain a ultimate enhanced image. Experiments result show that the image enhanced by this method has suitable visual brightness and clear details. In terms of objective indicators, it has good and stable performance in NIQE, TMQI, and information entropy.