Evaluation of noise suppression and luminance reconstruction in high dynamic range image deghosting methods

Various High Dynamic Range (HDR) deghosting algorithms have been developed to solve the problem of merging dynamic content in multi-exposure HDR imaging. Even though these algorithms may be successful in `ghost´ removal, they may fail to reduce noise in the resultant HDR image. As a result, the presence of noise in the generated HDR image degrades the overall image quality. HDR deghosting algorithms should also aim to reconstruct values that are approximately proportional to the luminance of the real scene. In this work we evaluate noise and luminance reconstruction in HDR images generated by five state-of-the-art HDR deghosting algorithms. The observations based on the obtained results are instrumental to guide the development of new HDR deghosting algorithms that will also aim to reduce noise and reconstruct original scene luminance to produce a good quality deghosted HDR image.