Video Enhancement to Reduce Reflection and Darkness Caused by the Sunglasses using Fusion Algorithm

Abstract

The enhancement of video of a person wearing sunglasses to reduce the reflection and darkness is a very challenging task in computer vision applications such as video surveillance. The existence of reflections and darkness caused by sunglasses results in intrusive images. The absence of a clear eye diminishes the visible quality of the complete face image. The eyes under sunglasses are not identified clearly if the reflection and darkness exist in the sunglasses. This paper demonstrates the reduction of adverse artifacts such as reflection and darkness in the eye region caused by sunglasses. The system is carried out with the fusion algorithm which consists of three modules: eyeglass tracking on face images, reduction of reflection, and reduction of darkness through the image enhancement method. The image enhancement method includes a color balance algorithm and a histogram stretching algorithm. Firstly, an automatic glasses presence detection model, based on a Robust Local Binary Pattern identifies the imaging process of the ocular region covered by the sunglasses. Secondly, a non-convex optimization scheme, guided by landmarks on the glasses, effectively reduces reflections through several iterations. The image enhancement method incorporating Color Balance, and Histogram Stretching is used to identify eye regions within sunglasses. The resulting regenerated eye regions within sunglasses exhibit increased brightness, subtle darkness, and minimized reflection. The objective evaluation metrics such as peak signal-to-noise ratio, structural similarity index measure, and logarithmic mean square error are used to measure the strength of the proposed system. Qualitative evaluations are conducted to demonstrate the good quality of eyeglass face images with reduced reflection and darkness.