Image enhancement of low-light scenes with near-infrared flash images

  • Authors:

  • Sosuke Matsui;Takahiro Okabe;Mihoko Shimano;Yoichi Sato

  • Affiliations:

  • Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo;Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo;Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo;Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo

  • Venue:
  • ACCV'09 Proceedings of the 9th Asian conference on Computer Vision - Volume Part I
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

We present a novel technique for enhancing an image captured in low light by using near-infrared flash images. The main idea is to combine a color image with near-infrared flash images captured at the same time without causing any interference with the color image. In this work, near-infrared flash images are effectively used for removing annoying effects that are commonly observed in images of dimly lit environments, namely, image noise and motion blur. Our denoising method uses a pair of color and near-infrared flash images captured simultaneously. Therefore it is applicable to dynamic scenes, whereas existing methods assume stationary scenes and require a pair of flash and no-flash color images captured sequentially. Our deblurring method utilizes a set of near-infrared flash images captured during the exposure time of a single color image and directly acquires a motion blur kernel based on optical flow. We implemented a multispectral imaging system and confirmed the effectiveness of our technique through experiments using real images.