SCDNet: Self-Calibrating Depth Network with Soft-Edge Reconstruction for Low-Light Image Enhancement

Abstract

Captured low-light images typically suffer from low brightness, low contrast, and blurred details due to the scattering and absorption of light and limited lighting. To deal with these issues, we propose a self-calibrating depth network with soft-edge reconstruction for low-light image enhancement. Concretely, we first employ the soft edge reconstruction module to reconstruct the soft edge of the input image and extract the texture and detail information of the image. Afterward, we explore the convergence properties of each input via the self-calibration module to significantly improve the computational effectiveness of the method and gradually correct the inputs at each subsequent level. Finally, the low-light image is iteratively enhanced by an iterative light enhancement curve to obtain a high-quality image. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our SCDNet visually enhances the brightness and contrast, restores the actual color, and makes the image more in line with the characteristics of the human eye vision system. Meanwhile, our SCDNet outperforms the compared methods in some qualitative and quantitative metrics.