18

Jan' 2021
Research

Real-time dark image enhancement for better night driving performance

Researchers at SiliconTech’s Signal Processing group are developing an algorithm that can not only enhance the dark regions of an image but also effectively manipulate the local contrast of the bright regions for proper overall enhancement of an image without any significant loss of original information.

Human vision is limited to perceive the objects under darkness in presence of highly illuminated light sources. This causes a major problem during night driving by the drivers to watch at darker regions when high beams of vehicle headlights are projected on their eyes.

The same problem arises while capturing information by the traffic management system due to direct projection of street light and vehicle high beam on a CCD camera. Very little research has been carried out to address this problem but no significant results have come out till now.

The existing dark image enhancement algorithms can effectively enhance the darker regions but fail to enhance the brighter regions that are over saturated. This leads to fading of the nearby darker objects resulting in information loss.

Hence, there is a requirement to develop an algorithm which can not only enhance the dark regions of an image but at the same time effectively manipulate the local contrast of the bright regions for proper overall enhancement of an image without any significant loss of original information.