Low-Illumination Image Enhancement Algorithm Based on Improved Multi-Scale Retinex and ABC Algorithm Optimization

In order to solve the problems of poor image quality, loss of detail information and excessive brightness enhancement during image enhancement in low light environment, we propose a low-light image enhancement algorithm based on improved multi-scale Retinex and Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) algorithm optimization in this paper. First of all, the algorithm makes two copies of the original image, afterwards, the irradiation component of the original image is obtained by used the structure extraction from texture via relative total variation for the first image, and combines it with the multi-scale Retinex algorithm to obtain the reflection component of the original image, which are simultaneously enhanced using histogram equalization, bilateral gamma function correction and bilateral filtering. In the next part, the second image is enhanced by histogram equalization and edge-preserving with Weighted Guided Image Filtering (WGIF). Finally, the weight-optimized image fusion is performed by ABC algorithm. The mean values of Information Entropy (IE), Average Gradient (AG) and Standard Deviation (SD) of the enhanced images are respectively 7.7878, 7.5560 and 67.0154, and the improvement compared to original image is respectively 2.4916, 5.8599 and 52.7553. The results of experiment show that the algorithm proposed in this paper improves the light loss problem in the image enhancement process, enhances the image sharpness, highlights the image details, restores the color of the image, and also reduces image noise with good edge preservation which enables a better visual perception of the image.