Unevenly illuminated image distortion correction using brightness perception and chromatic luminance

Images are of paramount significance in the contemporary scientific era for various applications. However, the environmental and lighting conditions of the surroundings greatly influence the quality and visibility of the images. In low-illumination scenes, images tend to suffer from poor visibility, which deteriorates in the presence of uneven illumination. Several methods have been developed to address this issue; however, their results have proven to be unsatisfactory. The present work deals effectively with unevenly illuminated dark images by deploying a brightness transfer function based on the Weber-Fechner law. The proposed transfer function is adaptively controlled by the value and saturation components of the input image converted in HSV space. Additionally, an image fusion technique is employed to acquire a detailed enhanced image. Furthermore, a novel function based on the Helmholtz-Kohlrausch (H-K) effect is introduced for color contrast enhancement. Both qualitative and quantitative assessments validate that the proposed approach outperforms several existing methods.