Dark image enhancement based onpairwise target contrast and multi-scale detail boosting

A dark image enhancement algorithm based on the pairwise target contrast and the multi-scale detail boosting is proposed in this work. We first compute the pairwise target contrast between a pair of pixels, which represents the desired gray level difference of the two pixels in the output image. By aggregating the pairwise target contrasts for all pairs of pixels in an image, we formulate a cost function for the enhancement. By minimizing the cost function, we obtain the optimal transformation function and enhance the image. In addition, we propose a multi-scale approach to boost details in the globally enhanced image. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm enhances the contrast and visibility of dark images more effectively than conventional algorithms.