Title: Low-light image enhancement using cell vibration model

Abstract: Low light very likely leads to the degradation of an image’s quality and even causes visual task failures. Existing image enhancement technologies are prone to over enhancement, color distortion or time consumption, and their adaptability is fairly limited. Therefore, we propose a new single low-light image lightness enhancement method. First, an energy model is presented based on the analysis of membrane vibrations induced by photon stimulations. Then, based on the unique mathematical properties of the energy model and combined with the gamma correction model, a new global lightness enhancement model is proposed. Furthermore, a special relationship between image lightness and gamma intensity is found. Finally, a local fusion strategy, including segmentation, filtering and fusion, is proposed to optimize the local details of the global lightness enhancement images. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is superior to nine state-of-the-art methods in avoiding color distortion, restoring the textures of dark areas, reproducing natural colors and reducing time cost.

Bio: Dr. Huiyu Zhou received a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Radio Technology from Huazhong University of Science and Technology of China, and a Master of Science degree in Biomedical Engineering from University of Dundee of United Kingdom, respectively. He was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Computer Vision from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. Dr. Zhou currently is a full Professor at School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, University of Leicester, United Kingdom. He has published over 500 peer-reviewed papers in the field. His research work has been or is being supported by UK EPSRC, ESRC, AHRC, MRC, EU, Royal Society, Leverhulme Trust, Invest NI, Puffin Trust, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Invest NI and industry.