mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Retinex-inspired Unrolling with Cooperative Prior Architecture Search for Low-light Image Enhancement

arXiv 2012.05609 ↗First posted 10 Dec 2020cs.CVcited by 303

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Cited by 28 in Diffusion models, but placed by its own abstract, which didn’t fit.

Abstract (arXiv)

Low-light image enhancement plays very important roles in low-level vision field. Recent works have built a large variety of deep learning models to address this task. However, these approaches mostly rely on significant architecture engineering and suffer from high computational burden. In this paper, we propose a new method, named Retinex-inspired Unrolling with Architecture Search (RUAS), to construct lightweight yet effective enhancement network for low-light images in real-world scenario. Specifically, building upon Retinex rule, RUAS first establishes models to characterize the intrinsic underexposed structure of low-light images and unroll their optimization processes to construct our holistic propagation structure. Then by designing a cooperative reference-free learning strategy to discover low-light prior architectures from a compact search space, RUAS is able to obtain a top-performing image enhancement network, which is with fast speed and requires few computational resources. Extensive experiments verify the superiority of our RUAS framework against recently proposed state-of-the-art methods.

Key facts. Cited by 303 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 10 Dec 2020.

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2021: 9; 2022: 30; 2023: 74; 2024: 74; 2025: 67; 2026: 49.

303 papers.

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  1. 2022Target-aware Dual Adversarial Learning and a Multi-scenario Multi-Modality Benchmark to Fuse Infrared and Visible for Object Detectioncited by 313
  2. 2023Retinexformer: One-stage Retinex-based Transformer for Low-light Image Enhancementcited by 228
  3. 2021Low-Light Image Enhancement with Normalizing Flowcited by 184
  4. 2022Ultra-High-Definition Low-Light Image Enhancement: A Benchmark and Transformer-Based Methodcited by 174
  5. 2021Investigating Bi-Level Optimization for Learning and Vision from a Unified Perspective: A Survey and Beyondcited by 151
  6. 2021Low-Light Image and Video Enhancement Using Deep Learning: A Surveycited by 148
  7. 2024InstructIR: High-Quality Image Restoration Following Human Instructionscited by 139
  8. 2023Low-Light Image Enhancement with Wavelet-based Diffusion Modelscited by 126
  9. 2023Diff-Retinex: Rethinking Low-light Image Enhancement with A Generative Diffusion Modelcited by 118
  10. 2023Iterative Prompt Learning for Unsupervised Backlit Image Enhancementcited by 107
  11. 2021R2RNet: Low-light Image Enhancement via Real-low to Real-normal Networkcited by 106
  12. 2022ShadowDiffusion: When Degradation Prior Meets Diffusion Model for Shadow Removalcited by 102
38 more
  1. 2022LEDNet: Joint Low-light Enhancement and Deblurring in the Darkcited by 95
  2. 2023Implicit Neural Representation for Cooperative Low-light Image Enhancementcited by 92
  3. 2024OneRestore: A Universal Restoration Framework for Composite Degradationcited by 91
  4. 2023Embedding Fourier for Ultra-High-Definition Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 86
  5. 2023Low-Light Image Enhancement via Structure Modeling and Guidancecited by 78
  6. 2022Unsupervised Night Image Enhancement: When Layer Decomposition Meets Light-Effects Suppressioncited by 73
  7. 2024LightenDiffusion: Unsupervised Low-Light Image Enhancement with Latent-Retinex Diffusion Modelscited by 70
  8. 2023Reti-Diff: Illumination Degradation Image Restoration with Retinex-based Latent Diffusion Modelcited by 69
  9. 2023Residual Denoising Diffusion Modelscited by 68
  10. 2023FourLLIE: Boosting Low-Light Image Enhancement by Fourier Frequency Informationcited by 64
  11. 2022CoCoNet: Coupled Contrastive Learning Network with Multi-level Feature Ensemble for Multi-modality Image Fusioncited by 63
  12. 2025HVI: A New Color Space for Low-light Image Enhancementcited by 62
  13. 2024Retinexmamba: Retinex-based Mamba for Low-light Image Enhancementcited by 59
  14. 2024Zero-Reference Low-Light Enhancement via Physical Quadruple Priorscited by 58
  15. 2023Learning Semantic-Aware Knowledge Guidance for Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 57
  16. 2024MambaLLIE: Implicit Retinex-Aware Low Light Enhancement with Global-then-Local State Spacecited by 48
  17. 2024Wave-Mamba: Wavelet State Space Model for Ultra-High-Definition Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 48
  18. 2024DarkIR: Robust Low-Light Image Restorationcited by 48
  19. 2023A Task-guided, Implicitly-searched and Meta-initialized Deep Model for Image Fusioncited by 47
  20. 2023Lighting up NeRF via Unsupervised Decomposition and Enhancementcited by 40
  21. 2023STEPS: Joint Self-supervised Nighttime Image Enhancement and Depth Estimationcited by 36
  22. 2023An Interactively Reinforced Paradigm for Joint Infrared-Visible Image Fusion and Saliency Object Detectioncited by 36
  23. 2024Light the Night: A Multi-Condition Diffusion Framework for Unpaired Low-Light Enhancement in Autonomous Drivingcited by 35
  24. 2023Low-Light Image Enhancement with Illumination-Aware Gamma Correction and Complete Image Modelling Networkcited by 33
  25. 2024GLARE: Low Light Image Enhancement via Generative Latent Feature based Codebook Retrievalcited by 33
  26. 2021Semantically Contrastive Learning for Low-light Image Enhancementcited by 31
  27. 2023ExposureDiffusion: Learning to Expose for Low-light Image Enhancementcited by 29
  28. 2021All-Day Object Tracking for Unmanned Aerial Vehiclecited by 28
  29. 2025Directing Mamba to Complex Textures: An Efficient Texture-Aware State Space Model for Image Restorationcited by 27
  30. 2024NTIRE 2024 Challenge on Low Light Image Enhancement: Methods and Resultscited by 26
  31. 2024You Only Need One Color Space: An Efficient Network for Low-light Image Enhancementcited by 24
  32. 2023Tracker Meets Night: A Transformer Enhancer for UAV Trackingcited by 23
  33. 2021Learning with Nested Scene Modeling and Cooperative Architecture Search for Low-Light Visioncited by 22
  34. 2023Bilevel Fast Scene Adaptation for Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 22
  35. 2023FeatEnHancer: Enhancing Hierarchical Features for Object Detection and Beyond Under Low-Light Visioncited by 22
  36. 2023Empowering Low-Light Image Enhancer through Customized Learnable Priorscited by 22
  37. 2024LYT-NET: Lightweight YUV Transformer-based Network for Low-light Image Enhancementcited by 22
  38. 2022Learning to Adapt to Lightcited by 21

50 most cited of 303 All 303 (JSON)