Luminance Learning for Remotely Sensed Image Enhancement Guided by Weighted Least Squares

Abstract

Low/high or uneven luminance results in low contrast of remotely sensed images (RSIs), which makes it challenging to analyze their contents. In order to improve the contrast and preserving fine weak details of RSIs, this letter proposes a novel enhancement framework to correct luminance guided by weighted least squares (WLS), including the following key parts. First, an image is separated into a base layer and a detail layer by employing the WLS. Then, a learning network is proposed to correct luminance for the base layer enhancement. Next, an enhancement operator for improving the detail layer is computed by using the original image and the enhanced base layer. Finally, the output image is obtained with a fusion of the enhanced base and detail components. Both quantitatively and qualitatively experimental results verify that the proposed method performs better than the state of the arts in contrast improvement and detail preservation.