Hardware-efficient virtual high dynamic range image reproduction

High dynamic range (HDR) images keep dynamic range of luminance from 10⁵ to 10⁸ and preserve more details than low dynamic range (LDR) images. Conventional acquisition of HDR images requires several images with different exposure settings of one scene, so multiple cameras or static scene are necessary. Besides, in order to transform HDR images onto normal LDR display, tone-mapping algorithms are required which need intensive computations. In this paper, we propose a hardware-efficient virtual HDR image synthesizer that includes virtual photography and local contrast enhancement. Only one LDR image is enough to generate HDR-like images, with fine details and uniformly-distributed intensity. A real-time hardware display system suitable for image or video contrast enhancement is also implemented. Under UMC90um technology, we can process video sequences with NTSC 720×480 resolution at 60 frames per second (FPS), running at 100MHz and consume 0.3mm² silicon area.