access icon free Low-bit depth-high-dynamic range image generation by blending differently exposed images

© The Institution of Engineering and Technology
Received 22/10/2012, Accepted 19/02/2013, Revised 31/01/2013, Published

Recently, high-dynamic range (HDR) imaging has taken the centre stage because of the drawbacks of low-dynamic range imaging, namely detail losses in under- and over-exposed areas. In this study, the authors propose an algorithm for HDR image generation of a low-bit depth from two differently exposed images. For compatibility with conventional devices, HDR image generations of a large bit depth and bit depth compression are skipped. By using posterior probability-based labelling, luminance adjusting and adaptive blending, the authors directly blend two input images into one while preserving the global intensity order as well as enhancing its dynamic range. From the experiments on various test images, results confirm that the proposed method generates more natural HDR images than other state-of-the-art algorithms regardless of image properties.

Inspec keywords: image sensors; image enhancement; brightness; probability; data compression; image coding

Other keywords: image properties; posterior probability-based labelling; digital image sensors; low-bit depth-high-dynamic range image generation; global intensity preservation; low-dynamic range imaging; bit depth compression; luminance adjusting; image quality enhancement; adaptive blending; HDR image generation

Subjects: Other topics in statistics; Other topics in statistics; Image sensors; Computer vision and image processing techniques; Image and video coding

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