Using temporal correlation for fast and highdetailed video tone mapping

Tone Mapping Operators (TMOs) approximate the appearance of High-Dynamic-Range (HDR) content in standard displays. The few available video TMOs are computationally complex versions of existing schemes developed for still images. We introduce a fast method for video tone mapping that takes advantage of the strong temporal correlation that is usually found in video sequences. Each frame is divided into several blocks and we employ a motion estimation scheme that searches for similar blocks in a previously tone-mapped reference frame. The bilateral filter TMO is employed for the reference frames, but any other TMO can be used with our scheme. Experiments show that high-detailed tone-mapped content can be created without the need of employing a complex TMO on every frame.