Research on Retinex Algorithm Combining with Attention Mechanism for Image Enhancement

Abstract

Considering the high noise and chromatic aberration in the Retinex-Net image enhancement results, this paper put forward a modified Retinex-Net algorithm for weak illumination image enhancement based on the Decom-Net and Enhance-Net structures of Retinex-Net. The improved structure proposed in this paper adds the attention mechanism ECA-Net into the Decom-Net and Enhance-Net convolution layer of the original Retinex-Net structure, which can effectively reduce the problem of irrelevant background and local brightness imbalance, activate sensitive features, and improve the image’s details and brightness processing ability. Additionally, deep connected attention networks are embedded between the introduced attention modules, so that all of the attention modules can be trained jointly to improve the learning ability. Furthermore, the improved method also introduces a noise reduction loss function and a color loss function to suppress noise and to reduce image color distortion. The test results of the proposed method indicate that the image’s overall brightness can be balanced, the local areas cannot be overexposed, and more image details and color information can be retained than with other enhancement algorithms.