# Visibility Constrained Wide-band Illumination Spectrum Design for Seeing-in-the-Dark

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.11642 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11642/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 20 of its 55 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Mar 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08155/) (2016)
- [Deep Retinex Decomposition for Low-Light Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.04560/) (2018)
- [Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation using Cycle-Consistent Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.10593/) (2017)
- [Zero-Reference Deep Curve Estimation for Low-Light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.06826/) (2020)
- [EnlightenGAN: Deep Light Enhancement without Paired Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.06972/) (2019)
- [Learning to See in the Dark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.01934/) (2018)
- [LLNet: A Deep Autoencoder Approach to Natural Low-light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.03995/) (2015)
- [DenseFuse: A Fusion Approach to Infrared and Visible Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.08361/) (2018)
- [A Physics-based Noise Formation Model for Extreme Low-light Raw Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12751/) (2020)
- [Supervised Raw Video Denoising with a Benchmark Dataset on Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.14013/) (2020)
- [Practical Deep Raw Image Denoising on Mobile Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.06935/) (2020)
- [Rethinking Noise Synthesis and Modeling in Raw Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.04756/) (2021)
- [Learnability Enhancement for Low-light Raw Denoising: Where Paired Real Data Meets Noise Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.06103/) (2022)
- [DarkVisionNet: Low-Light Imaging via RGB-NIR Fusion with Deep Inconsistency Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.06834/) (2023)
- [Unpaired Thermal to Visible Spectrum Transfer using Adversarial Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.02242/) (2019)
- [Infrared Colorization Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.02245/) (2016)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Enlighten Anything: When Segment Anything Model Meets Low-Light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.10286/) (2023)
- [Motion-Aware Animatable Gaussian Avatars Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.16758/) (2024)
- [Enlighten-Your-Voice: When Multimodal Meets Zero-shot Low-light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10109/) (2023)
- [Toward Robust and 3D-Aware RGB-NIR Imaging in the Dark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.29684/) (2026)
- [WorldSculpt: Generating Compositional Worlds from Grounded Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.05416/) (2026)
- [SpaceDG: Benchmarking Spatial Intelligence under Visual Degradation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.22536/) (2026)
- [Scanline-Aware Animatable Gaussian Avatars from Rolling-Shutter Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.17314/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Seeing-in-the-dark is one of the most important and challenging computer vision tasks due to its wide applications and extreme complexities of in-the-wild scenarios. Existing arts can be mainly divided into two threads: 1) RGB-dependent methods restore information using degraded RGB inputs only (eg, low-light enhancement), 2) RGB-independent methods translate images captured under auxiliary near-infrared (NIR) illuminants into RGB domain (eg, NIR2RGB translation). The latter is very attractive since it works in complete darkness and the illuminants are visually friendly to naked eyes, but tends to be unstable due to its intrinsic ambiguities. In this paper, we try to robustify NIR2RGB translation by designing the optimal spectrum of auxiliary illumination in the wide-band VIS-NIR range, while keeping visual friendliness. Our core idea is to quantify the visibility constraint implied by the human vision system and incorporate it into the design pipeline. By modeling the formation process of images in the VIS-NIR range, the optimal multiplexing of a wide range of LEDs is automatically designed in a fully differentiable manner, within the feasible region defined by the visibility constraint. We also collect a substantially expanded VIS-NIR hyperspectral image dataset for experiments by using a customized 50-band filter wheel. Experimental results show that the task can be significantly improved by using the optimized wide-band illumination than using NIR only. Codes Available: https://github.com/MyNiuuu/VCSD.