Low-light imaging method with visible-band and wide-band image pair

Images captured from digital camera suffer noise due to high sensor gain under dark conditions. Furthermore, camera-shake is unavoidable when exposure time is long enough to have desirable SNR. This paper presents an image capturing method that enhances image quality in low-light environments by fusing visible-band (400 ~ 700 nm) image and wide-band (400 ~ 1000 nm) image. Wide-band image has lower noise, richer detail and a monotonic color. Visible-band image has higher noise, poorer detail and a trichromatic color. We describe how the advantages of these images are exploited to create new image that is of higher quality. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed method significantly improves quality of images under low illumination conditions.