Improved elastic registration for removing ghost artifacts in high dynamic imaging

In this paper, we present a ghost artifacts removing method for obtaining artifact-free high dynamic range (HDR) images in the presence of camera movement. The existing HDR methods work on condition that there is no camera movement when acquiring multiple low dynamic range (LDR) images. For overcoming such unrealistic restriction, we register the multiple LDR images by using a novel target frame finding method. Ghost artifacts are removed in the resulting HDR images since the registration process of LDR images compensates undesired camera motion. Since the proposed method can embed the self compensating function into an imaging device, Ghost-free HDR imaging application can be extended to most consumer cameras, such as mobile phone cameras, point-and-shoot cameras, and digital single lens reflected (DSLR) cameras without using additional stabilizing equipments.