Variational Approach for Intensity Domain Multi-exposure Image Fusion

TL;DR

This paper introduces a variational method for multi-exposure image fusion that preserves details across different illumination regions without requiring radiance reconstruction, using local information measures and CLAHE for improved results.

Contribution

The proposed approach uniquely combines local information measures with CLAHE to enhance multi-exposure fusion without radiance reconstruction, improving detail preservation.

Findings

Effective preservation of details in both dark and bright regions.

Improved uniformity of fused images with CLAHE.

Method does not require radiance map reconstruction.

Abstract

Recent innovations shows that blending of details captured by single Low Dynamic Range (LDR) sensor overcomes the limitations of standard digital cameras to capture details from high dynamic range scene. We present a method to produce well-exposed fused image that can be displayed directly on conventional display devices. The ambition is to preserve details in poorly illuminated and brightly illuminated regions. Proposed approach does not require true radiance reconstruction and tone manipulation steps. The aforesaid objective is achieved by taking into account local information measure that select well-exposed regions across input exposures. In addition, Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram equalization (CLAHE) is introduced to improve uniformity of input multi-exposure image prior to fusion.