Single Image Highlight Removal for Real-Time Image Processing Pipelines

Vitor S Ramos,Luiz Felipe De Q Silveira,Luiz Gonzaga De Q Silveira Junior

doi:10.1109/access.2019.2963037

Vitor S Ramos, Luiz Felipe De Q Silveira + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2019.2963037

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Abstract

This paper presents a fully automatic method for the separation of diffuse and specular reflection components from a single image. Overall, the mechanisms in which the available methods operate on are computationally costly and do not translate well to modern hardware-implemented image processing pipelines, such as the ones present in consumer electronics. Consequently, the objective of this article is to introduce a simple yet effective method for specular highlight removal. It is based on the dichromatic reflection model and operates through histogram matching in the YCbCr color space. The proposed method performs in real-time. It only uses global image statistics and point-wise intensity transformations. Experimental evaluation shows that the proposed approach has competitive results in comparison to state-of-the-art methods. Limitations of the proposed approach are seldom and are common to most methods available. The proposed method, however, achieves better quality results with much less computational cost, thus enabling feasibility in systems with limited processing power.

Highlights

The separation of diffuse and specular components from images traces back to as early as 1985 when Shafer first introduced the dichromatic reflection model (DRM) in his seminal paper [1]
This paper considers the open problem of automatic specular highlight removal, i.e. the separation of specular reflectance components [2], from a single image
Under the DRM [1], it is defined as one of the basic reflection components of a material, The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Haimiao Hu

Summary

Introduction

The separation of diffuse (body) and specular (interface) components from images traces back to as early as 1985 when Shafer first introduced the dichromatic reflection model (DRM) in his seminal paper [1]. It is possible to classify how each method operates, e.g. if they require single, multiple or spectral images, and if they require manual segmentation or perform it automatically. In this context, this paper considers the open problem of automatic specular highlight removal, i.e. the separation of specular reflectance components [2], from a single image. The specular phenomena visually appear as shiny, glossy, or mirrorlike regions. Under the DRM [1], it is defined as one of the basic reflection components of a material, The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Haimiao Hu

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