Multi-scale Retinex With Color Restoration Research Articles

A Multi-Step Image Pre-Enhancement Strategy for a Fish Feeding Behavior Analysis Using Efficientnet

To enhance the accuracy of lightweight CNN classification models in analyzing fish feeding behavior, this paper addresses the image quality issues caused by external environmental factors and lighting conditions, such as low contrast and uneven illumination, by proposing a Multi-step Image Pre-enhancement Strategy (MIPS). This strategy includes three critical steps: initially, images undergo a preliminary processing using the Multi-Scale Retinex with Color Restoration (MSRCR) algorithm, effectively reducing the impact of water surface reflections and enhancing the visual effect of the images; secondly, the Multi-Metric-Driven Contrast Limited Adaptive Histogram Equalization (mdc) technique is applied to further improve image contrast, especially in areas of low contrast, by adjusting the local contrast levels to enhance the clarity of the image details; finally, Unsharp Masking (UM) technology is employed to sharpen the images, emphasizing their edges to increase the clarity of the image details, thereby significantly improving the overall image quality. Experimental results on a custom dataset have confirmed that this pre-enhancement strategy significantly boosts the accuracy of various CNN-based classification models, particularly for lightweight CNN models, and drastically reduces the time required for model training compared to the use of advanced ResNet models. This research provides an effective technical route for improving the accuracy and efficiency of an image-based analysis of fish feeding behavior in complex environments.

YOLO-BLBE: A Novel Model for Identifying Blueberry Fruits with Different Maturities Using the I-MSRCR Method

Blueberry is among the fruits with high economic gains for orchard farmers. Identification of blueberry fruits with different maturities has economic significance to help orchard farmers plan pesticide application, estimate yield, and conduct harvest operations efficiently. Vision systems for automated orchard yield estimation have received growing attention toward fruit identification with different maturity stages. However, due to interfering factors such as varying outdoor illuminations, similar colors with the surrounding canopy, imaging distance, and occlusion in natural environments, it remains a serious challenge to develop reliable visual methods for identifying blueberry fruits with different maturities. This study constructed a YOLO-BLBE (Blueberry) model combined with an innovative I-MSRCR (Improved MSRCR (Multi-Scale Retinex with Color Restoration)) method to accurately identify blueberry fruits with different maturities. The color feature of blueberry fruit in the original image was enhanced by the I-MSRCR algorithm, which was improved based on the traditional MSRCR algorithm by adjusting the proportion of color restoration factors. The GhostNet model embedded by the CA (coordinate attention) mechanism module replaced the original backbone network of the YOLOv5s model to form the backbone of the YOLO-BLBE model. The BIFPN (Bidirectional Feature Pyramid Network) structure was applied in the neck network of the YOLO-BLBE model, and Alpha-EIOU was used as the loss function of the model to determine and filter candidate boxes. The main contributions of this study are as follows: (1) The I-MSRCR algorithm proposed in this paper can effectively amplify the color differences between blueberry fruits of different maturities. (2) Adding the synthesized blueberry images processed by the I-MSRCR algorithm to the training set for training can improve the model’s recognition accuracy for blueberries of different maturity levels. (3) The YOLO-BLBE model achieved an average identification accuracy of 99.58% for mature blueberry fruits, 96.77% for semi-mature blueberry fruits, and 98.07% for immature blueberry fruits. (4) The YOLO-BLBE model had a size of 12.75 MB and an average detection speed of 0.009 s.

Power equipment image enhancement processing based on YOLO-v8 target detection model under MSRCR algorithm

Abstract With the rapid development of the power industry, higher requirements have been put forward for real-time monitoring and fault identification of power equipment. However, images of power equipment in actual scenes are often affected by problems such as uneven illumination and color distortion, leading to a decrease in the performance of the target detection model. Hence, this paper suggests merging the Multi-Scale Retinex with Color Restoration (MSRCR) algorithm with the YOLO-v8 target detection model to enhance the visual quality of power equipment images and boost the accuracy and efficiency of target detection. Initially, the MSRCR algorithm enhances image brightness, contrast, and color restoration and preserves edge and detail features. Subsequently, the paper explores the architecture of YOLO-v8, incorporating the SE (Squeeze-and-Excitation) attention mechanism. This mechanism dynamically adjusts channel weights to optimize feature processing in input data. The final experimental results show that using the MSRCR algorithm to enhance the data and combining it with the SE attention mechanism have improved by about 3.2% compared to the original YOLO-v8 model. In comparative experiments with other algorithms, the method proposed in this article achieved an accuracy of 94.3% and a recall rate of 92.6%, which are both higher than other models. By enhancing power equipment images with the MSRCR algorithm, the YOLO-v8 model has significantly improved both target detection accuracy and recall rate. In summary, the MSRCR power equipment image enhancement processing method proposed in this article based on the YOLO-v8 target detection model can effectively improve the visual quality of power equipment images and improve the accuracy and efficiency of target detection.

Research on the Small Target Recognition Method of Automobile Tire Marking Points Based on Improved YOLOv5s

At present, the identification of tire marking points relies primarily on manual inspection, which is not only time-consuming and labor-intensive but also prone to false detections, significantly impacting enterprise efficiency. To achieve accurate recognition of tire marking points, this study proposes a small target feature recognition method for automotive tire marking points. In image pre-processing, MSRCR (Multi-Scale Retinex with Color Restoration) is invoked to enhance image features, which can be adapted to different environmental detection tasks. The YOLOv5s network is improved by adding a parameter-free simAM (Similarity Attention Mechanism) attention mechanism to improve the detection efficiency; adding a small target prediction head in the network to improve the minimum recognition size of the network; and changing the loss function to improve the network recognition performance. MAP, precision, and recall are important parameters. The comparison experiment with the traditional YOLOv5s network shows that the mAP of the improved YOLOv5s network and the original network is 0.86 and 0.955, respectively, and the mAP is increased by 9.5%. The precision is 0.87 and 0.96, an improvement of 9%, and the recall rate is 0.84 and 0.89, an improvement of 4%; the improved YOLOv5s model has a higher confidence level for small target recognition and is more suitable for application in practical detection tasks.

Online classification of soybean seeds based on deep learning

To quickly evaluate soybean quality, we proposed a deep learning-based method for online classification of soybean seeds. Firstly, images of soybean seeds with uneven illumination were segmented based on the multi-scale Retinex with color restoration (MSRCR). Then, a convolutional neural network (CNN) was constructed to achieve soybean seed four-classification with appropriate parameters. The F-score of the normal, damaged, abnormal, and non-classifiable soybeans reached about 95.97%, 97.41%, 97.25%, and 96.14%, respectively. Finally, the method was successfully applied in NVIDIA Jetson TX2 with an accuracy of 95.63% and an average classification time of 4.92 ms for a soybean seed, which can meet the requirement of online soybean quality assessment.

Research on Improved Retinex-Based Image Enhancement Method for Mine Monitoring

An improved Retinex fusion image enhancement algorithm is proposed for the traditional image denoising methods and problems of halo enlargement and image overexposure after image enhancement caused by the existing Retinex algorithm. First, a homomorphic filtering algorithm is used to enhance each RGB component of the underground coal mine surveillance image and convert the image from RGB space to HSV space. Second, bilateral filtering and multi-scale retinex with color restoration (MSRCR) fusion algorithms are used to enhance the luminance V component while keeping the hue H component unchanged. Third, adaptive nonlinear stretching transform is used for the saturation S-component. Last, the three elements are combined and converted back to RGB space. MATLAB simulation experiments verify the superiority of the improved algorithm. Based on the same dataset and experimental environment, the improved algorithm has a more uniform histogram distribution than the multi-scale Retinex (msr) algorithm and MSRCR algorithm through comparative experiments. At the same time, the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), structural similarity (SSIM), standard deviation, average gradient, mean value, and colour picture information entropy of the images were improved by 8.28, 0.15, 4.39, 7.38, 52.92 and 2.04, respectively, compared to the MSR algorithm, and 3.97, 0.02, 34.33, 60.46, 26.21, and 1.33, respectively, compared to the MSRCR algorithm. The experimental results show that the image quality, brightness and contrast of the images enhanced by the improved Retinex algorithm are significantly enhanced, and the amount of information in the photos increases, the halo and overexposure in the images are considerably reduced, and the anti-distortion performance is also improved.

Underwater Sea Cucumber Identification Based on Improved YOLOv5

In order to develop an underwater sea cucumber collecting robot, it is necessary to use the machine vision method to realize sea cucumber recognition and location. An identification and location method of underwater sea cucumber based on improved You Only Look Once version 5 (YOLOv5) is proposed. Due to the low contrast between sea cucumbers and the underwater environment, the Multi-Scale Retinex with Color Restoration (MSRCR) algorithm was introduced to process the images to enhance the contrast. In order to improve the recognition precision and efficiency, the Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM) is added. In order to make small target recognition more precise, the Detect layer was added to the Head network of YOLOv5s. The improved YOLOv5s model and YOLOv5s, YOLOv4, and Faster-RCNN identified the same image set; the experimental results show improved YOLOv5 recognition precision level and confidence level, especially for small target recognition, which is excellent and better than other models. Compared to the other three models, the improved YOLOv5s has higher precision and detection time. Compared with the YOLOv5s, the precision and recall rate of the improved YOLOv5s model are improved by 9% and 11.5%, respectively.

Soybean image segmentation based on multi-scale Retinex with color restoration

Aiming at the matter of seed overlapping and adhesion within the actual quality detection of soybean, a soybean image segmentation based on multi-scale Retinex with color restoration (MSRCR) was proposed. Firstly, original images of soybean were obtained by the industrial camera. secondly, these images were enhanced by MSRCR. Thirdly, these images after MSRCR were segmented by Otsu. Finally, soybean seed images were extracted by mask and minimum bounding rectangle from soybean images after MSRCR. The image acquisition system was constructed and the algorithm was verified. The experiment showed that the segmentation accuracy of the proposed algorithm was 98.05%, which can meet the requirement of soybean image segmentation. Additionally, the proposed algorithm can also provide an image preprocessing method for agricultural seed classification in similar scenes.

Vehicle detection in foggy weather based on an enhanced YOLO method

Vehicle detection is the key to driverless technology. For safety, driverless technology requires extremely high accuracy and real-time for vehicle detection in different situations. In this paper, we study an enhanced YOLO -based algorithm for vehicle detection in foggy weather conditions. We add a dehazing module in the YOLO model for more information restoration, which is built by the multi-scale retinex with color restoration (MSRCR). And the enhanced model is trained with the augmentation data processed MSRCR for more stable performance. We evaluate our method in the public dataset, the results show the enhanced YOLO model has better performance than conventional YOLO in vehicle detection in foggy weather.

Computer-Aided Image Enhanced Endoscopy Automated System to Boost Polyp and Adenoma Detection Accuracy.

Colonoscopy is the gold standard to detect colon polyps prematurely. Early detection, characterization and resection of polyps decrease colon cancer incidence. Colon polyp missing rate remains high despite novel methods development. Narrowed-band imaging (NBI) is one of the image enhance techniques used to boost polyp detection and characterization, which uses special filters to enhance the contrast of the mucosa surface and vascular pattern of the polyp. However, the single-button-activated system is not convenient for a full-time colonoscopy operation. We selected three methods to simulate the NBI system: Color Transfer with Mean Shift (CTMS), Multi-scale Retinex with Color Restoration (MSRCR), and Gamma and Sigmoid Conversions (GSC). The results show that the classification accuracy using the original images is the lowest. All color transfer methods outperform the original images approach. Our results verified that the color transfer has a positive impact on the polyp identification and classification task. Combined analysis results of the mAP and the accuracy show an excellent performance of the MSRCR method.

Presentation attack detection based on two-stream vision transformers with self-attention fusion

Aiming at the performance degradation of the existing presentation attack detection methods due to the illumination variation, a two-stream vision transformers framework (TSViT) based on transfer learning in two complementary spaces is proposed in this paper. The face images of RGB color space and multi-scale retinex with color restoration (MSRCR) space are fed to TSViT to learn the distinguishing features of presentation attack detection. To effectively fuse features from two sources (RGB color space images and MSRCR images), a feature fusion method based on self-attention is built, which can effectively capture the complementarity of two features. Experiments and analysis on Oulu-NPU, CASIA-MFSD, and Replay-Attack databases show that it outperforms most existing methods in intra-database testing and achieves good generalization performance in cross-database testing.

RFARN: Retinal vessel segmentation based on reverse fusion attention residual network.

Accurate segmentation of retinal vessels is critical to the mechanism, diagnosis, and treatment of many ocular pathologies. Due to the poor contrast and inhomogeneous background of fundus imaging and the complex structure of retinal fundus images, this makes accurate segmentation of blood vessels from retinal images still challenging. In this paper, we propose an effective framework for retinal vascular segmentation, which is innovative mainly in the retinal image pre-processing stage and segmentation stage. First, we perform image enhancement on three publicly available fundus datasets based on the multiscale retinex with color restoration (MSRCR) method, which effectively suppresses noise and highlights the vessel structure creating a good basis for the segmentation phase. The processed fundus images are then fed into an effective Reverse Fusion Attention Residual Network (RFARN) for training to achieve more accurate retinal vessel segmentation. In the RFARN, we use Reverse Channel Attention Module (RCAM) and Reverse Spatial Attention Module (RSAM) to highlight the shallow details of the channel and spatial dimensions. And RCAM and RSAM are used to achieve effective fusion of deep local features with shallow global features to ensure the continuity and integrity of the segmented vessels. In the experimental results for the DRIVE, STARE and CHASE datasets, the evaluation metrics were 0.9712, 0.9822 and 0.9780 for accuracy (Acc), 0.8788, 0.8874 and 0.8352 for sensitivity (Se), 0.9803, 0.9891 and 0.9890 for specificity (Sp), area under the ROC curve(AUC) was 0.9910, 0.9952 and 0.9904, and the F1-Score was 0.8453, 0.8707 and 0.8185. In comparison with existing retinal image segmentation methods, e.g. UNet, R2UNet, DUNet, HAnet, Sine-Net, FANet, etc., our method in three fundus datasets achieved better vessel segmentation performance and results.

Underwater image processing method based on red channel prior and Retinex algorithm

Due to light being absorbed by water and scattered by suspended particles, color distortion, low image contrast, and detail loss are the common problems found in underwater images. We present an underwater image processing method, which based on an underwater imaging model, makes initial image restoration with the improved red channel prior combining transmission reduction, background light correction, and color compensation to acquire clearer underwater images, and then combines multiscale retinex (MSR) enhancement and hue saturation value to enhance image color contrast and saturation. Results indicate that, compared with the original images, the method proposed in this paper is capable of significantly enhancing image definition, saturation, contrast, and luminance. In comparison with dark channel prior, single-scale retinex (SSR), MSR, and multiscale retinex with color restoration (MSRCR), this method greatly improved the average gradient of images while keeping the information entropy of images unchanged. The average gradient calculated with the proposed method increased by 239%, 199%, 200%, and 220% for the three given images, respectively, compared with the other methods above.

Automatic Reading Algorithm of Substation Dial Gauges Based on Coordinate Positioning

With the development of science and technology, inspection robots have attracted more and more attention, and research on the automatic reading of pointer instruments through inspection robots has become particularly valuable. Aiming at the problems of uneven illumination, complex dial background and damping fluid interference of the collected instrument images, this paper proposes a dial gauge reading algorithm based on coordinate positioning. First, the multi-scale retinex with color restoration (MSRCR) is applied to improve the uneven illumination of the image. Second, a circle detection algorithm based on the arc-support line segment is proposed to detect the disc to obtain the coordinate of the center and radius of the circle. Then, a pointerless template is used to obtain the pointer, and the concentric circle algorithm is applied to locate the refined pointer. Finally, the automatic reading is calculated using the relative position of the pointer and the zero scale. The experimental results prove that the proposed algorithm can accurately locate the center of the circle and the pointer and obtain readings automatically.

Exploring the solutions via Retinex enhancements for fruit recognition impacts of outdoor sunlight: a case study of navel oranges

Machine vision-based techniques are one of the critical means to realize intelligent orchard management. Additionally, the third wave of artificial intelligence guided by deep learning has promoted the application of machine vision technology in fruit recognition. Currently, multiple detection models can extract the fruits from collected images, yet the accuracy has often existed deviation, due to different observation times cause corresponding changes of sunlight throughout a day. Consequently, exploring a method to solve this problem is of great significance to facilitating smart orchards. On this basis, this article takes the navel orange as a study object, dividing four observation periods (10:00–11:00, 12:00–13:00, 14:00–15:00, 16:00–17:00) and two viewing distances of one-meter and two-meter to collect image data. Corresponding algorithms are designed according to each Retinex processing modes to assist the detection of YOLOv5, including single-scale Retinex (SSR), multi-scale Retinex (MSR), multi-scale Retinex with color restoration (MSRCR), multi-scale Retinex with chromaticity preservation (MSRCP), and MSRCR with automatic color gradation adjustment (AutoMSRCR). The experimental results showed that two observation periods of 10:00–11:00 and 14:00–15:00 are more conducive to the data collection, where MSR-based and MSRCR-based models respectively from the two periods improved 9.28% and 6.32% of mean average precision (MAP) than original YOLOv5 under one-meter viewing distance. Also, MSRCR-based and AutoMSRCR-based models achieved 4.92% and 16.91% of MAP higher than the original under two-meter viewing distance. Simultaneously, this article also provides technical selection schemes and analyzes the sensitivity of each model in typical impact scenarios.

Integrate MSRCR and Mask R-CNN to Recognize Underwater Creatures on Small Sample Datasets

The poor quality of optical imaging caused by the complex and varying underwater environment is a significant challenge to underwater target recognition. Moreover, the insufficiency of relevant datasets may lead to the overfitting problem in target recognition models based on deep learning. Taking the instance segmentation of three underwater creatures (echinus, holothurian, and starfish) as an example, we propose a new method for recognition of underwater creatures. It combines the MSRCR (multi-scale Retinex with color restoration) image enhancement algorithm and the Mask R-CNN (region-based convolutional neural work) framework, and achieves a mAP (mean average accuracy) value higher than 90% on a small sample dataset. This method consists of three major steps. First, the dataset with 84 images is augmented (flip, adding noise, and GAN (generative adversarial networks)) to 430 images, and all images are enhanced with MSRCR to improve their qualities; Second, the model is pre-trained on the COCO (Microsoft common objects in context) dataset to shorten the training time and overcome overfitting; Finally, the pre-trained model is transferred to the underwater dataset, and the whole training process is completed. We achieve 97.46% precision and 94.52% recall, and the mAP (intersection over union (IOU) = 50) is 94.84%. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by comparing it with several popular target recognition models, including SSD (Single Shot Detector), YOLOv3 (You only look once), original Mask R-CNN, and a SIFT-based (Scale-invariant feature transform) model.

Single Image Defogging Based on Multi-Channel Convolutional MSRCR

In order to solve the problem of image degradation in foggy weather, a single image defogging method based on a multi-scale retinex with color restoration (MSRCR) of multi-channel convolution (MC) is proposed. The whole defogging process mainly consists of four key parts: estimation of illumination components, guided filter operation, reconstruction of fog-free images, and white balance operation. First, the multi-scale Gaussian kernels are employed to extract precise features to estimate the illumination component. After that, the MSRCR method is applied to enhance the global contrast, detail information, and color restoration of the image. Second, the smoothing constraints of both illumination component and reflected component are considered together by using the guided filter twice, thus the enhanced image satisfies the smoothing constraint and the noise in the enhanced image is reduced. Third, the enhanced image by the MSRCR and the image processed by the secondary guided filter are fused by linear weighting to reconstruct the final fog-free image. Finally, in order to eliminate the influence of illumination on the color of the defogged image, the final defogged image is processed by white balance. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method can outperform state-of-the-art methods in both qualitative and quantitative comparisons.

An adaptive segmentation method combining MSRCR and mean shift algorithm with K-means correction of green apples in natural environment

During the recognition and localization process of green apple targets, problems such as uneven illumination, occlusion of branches and leaves need to be solved. In this study, the multi-scale Retinex with color restoration (MSRCR) algorithm was applied to enhance the original green apple images captured in an orchard environment, aiming to minimize the impacts of varying light conditions. The enhanced images were then explicitly segmented using the mean shift algorithm, leading to a consistent gray value of the internal pixels in an independent fruit. After that, the fuzzy attention based on information maximization algorithm (FAIM) was developed to detect the incomplete growth position and realize threshold segmentation. Finally, the poorly segmented images were corrected using the K-means algorithm according to the shape, color and texture features. The users intuitively acquire the minimum enclosing rectangle localization results on a PC. A total of 500 green apple images were tested in this study. Compared with the manifold ranking algorithm, the K-means clustering algorithm and the traditional mean shift algorithm, the segmentation accuracy of the proposed method was 86.67%, which was 13.32%, 19.82% and 9.23% higher than that of the other three algorithms, respectively. Additionally, the false positive and false negative errors were 0.58% and 11.64%, respectively, which were all lower than the other three compared algorithms. The proposed method accurately recognized the green apples under complex illumination conditions and growth environments. Additionally, it provided effective references for intelligent growth monitoring and yield estimation of fruits.

Multi-scale retinex with color restoration image enhancement based on Gaussian filtering and guided filtering

In order to restore image color and enhance contrast of remote sensing image without suffering from color cast and insufficient detail enhancement, a novel improved multi-scale retinex with color restoration (MSRCR) image enhancement algorithm based on Gaussian filtering and guided filtering was proposed in this paper. Firstly, multi-scale Gaussian filtering functions were used to deal with the original image to obtain the rough illumination components. Secondly, accurate illumination components were acquired by using the guided filtering functions. Then, combining with four-direction Sobel edge detector, a self-adaptive weight selection nonlinear image enhancement was carried out. Finally, a series of evaluate metrics such as mean, MSE, PSNR, contrast and information entropy were used to assess the enhancement algorithm. The results showed that the proposed algorithm can suppress effectively noise interference, enhance the image quality and restore image color effectively.

Local contrast preserving technique for the removal of thin cloud in aerial image

This paper presents a local contrast preserving technique based on multi-scale retinex with color restoration (MSRCR) for the aerial image. We first propose a divided strategy of the aerial image through the estimation of the intensity distribution of width and height direction. The aerial image is then divided into multiple blocked images according to the divided strategy. Afterwards, one contrast factor for each blocked image is calculated and the multiple local optimal thresholds are obtained from the blocked image. As a result the thin cloud is removed and contrast is restored through these local optimal factors in the aerial image. Experimental results show that the improved technique can effectively distinguish details and greatly enhance the contrast in the aerial image processed.