Adaptive local contrast enhancement for the visualization of high dynamic range images

In this paper, we present a new tone mapping algorithm for the display of high dynamic range images, inspired by adaptive process of the human visual system. The proposed algorithm is based on the center-surround Retinex processing. In our method, the local details are enhanced according to a non-linear adaptive spatial filter (Gaussian filter), whose shape (filter variance) is adapted to high-contrast edges of the image. Thus our method does not generate halo artifacts meanwhile preserves visibility and contrast impression of high dynamic range scenes in the common display devices. The proposed method is tested on a variety of HDR images and the results show the good performance of our method in terms of visual quality.