Blind inverse gamma correction

The luminance nonlinearity introduced by many imaging devices can often be described by a simple point-wise operation (gamma correction). This paper presents a technique for blindly estimating the amount of gamma correction in the absence of any calibration information or knowledge of the imaging device. The basic approach exploits the fact that gamma correction introduces specific higher-order correlations in the frequency domain. These correlations can be detected using tools from polyspectral analysis. The amount of gamma correction is then estimated by minimizing these correlations.