Wavelet energy-based adaptive retinex algorithm for low light mobile video enhancement

Abstract

ABSTRACT Our paper presents an adaptive multiscale retinex algorithm and a new wavelet energy metric to improve low-light video captured on mobile devices. Initially, we extract RGB frames from the video and convert them to hue-saturation-value (HSV) format, preserving the hue channel to prevent common RGB colour shifting issues. Saturation channel enhancement is achieved through histogram equalization (HE), extending the dynamic range. The adaptive retinex algorithm enhances the value channel, quantified by our new wavelet energy metric. Combining the modified value and saturation channels improves the contrast of the reconstructed image. As a final step, we transform the HSV video back to RGB and restore naturalness using a modified colour restoration technique. The proposed approach has been tested on over 300 images and videos. It is evident from the experimental results presented that the proposed method lowers noise and halo artifacts more effectively than existing methods.