mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Low-Light Image Enhancement via Structure Modeling and Guidance

arXiv 2305.05839 ↗First posted 10 May 2023cs.CVcited by 78

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Abstract (arXiv)

This paper proposes a new framework for low-light image enhancement by simultaneously conducting the appearance as well as structure modeling. It employs the structural feature to guide the appearance enhancement, leading to sharp and realistic results. The structure modeling in our framework is implemented as the edge detection in low-light images. It is achieved with a modified generative model via designing a structure-aware feature extractor and generator. The detected edge maps can accurately emphasize the essential structural information, and the edge prediction is robust towards the noises in dark areas. Moreover, to improve the appearance modeling, which is implemented with a simple U-Net, a novel structure-guided enhancement module is proposed with structure-guided feature synthesis layers. The appearance modeling, edge detector, and enhancement module can be trained end-to-end. The experiments are conducted on representative datasets (sRGB and RAW domains), showing that our model consistently achieves SOTA performance on all datasets with the same architecture.

Key facts. Cited by 78 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 40 of its 77 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 10 May 2023.

Builds on

40 of 77 references.

References · 40

  1. 2014Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimizationcited by 36,960
  2. 2019PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Librarycited by 20,160
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  5. 2021Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windowscited by 12,082
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  10. 2020Pre-Trained Image Processing Transformercited by 891
  11. 2021Uformer: A General U-Shaped Transformer for Image Restorationcited by 864
  12. 2020Encoding in Style: a StyleGAN Encoder for Image-to-Image Translationcited by 727
28 more
  1. 2021Designing an Encoder for StyleGAN Image Manipulationcited by 542
  2. 2020Zero-Reference Deep Curve Estimation for Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 541
  3. 2019EnlightenGAN: Deep Light Enhancement without Paired Supervisioncited by 466
  4. 2018Learning to See in the Darkcited by 459
  5. 2019Kindling the Darkness: A Practical Low-light Image Enhancercited by 355
  6. 2020Retinex-inspired Unrolling with Cooperative Prior Architecture Search for Low-light Image Enhancementcited by 303
  7. 2021Incorporating Convolution Designs into Visual Transformerscited by 248
  8. 2021GAN Prior Embedded Network for Blind Face Restoration in the Wildcited by 197
  9. 2021High-Fidelity GAN Inversion for Image Attribute Editingcited by 197
  10. 2021Low-Light Image Enhancement with Normalizing Flowcited by 184
  11. 2021Pixel Difference Networks for Efficient Edge Detectioncited by 167
  12. 2020Learning Image-adaptive 3D Lookup Tables for High Performance Photo Enhancement in Real-timecited by 163
  13. 2022Learning Enriched Features for Fast Image Restoration and Enhancementcited by 150
  14. 2020DeepLPF: Deep Local Parametric Filters for Image Enhancementcited by 107
  15. 2022Unsupervised Night Image Enhancement: When Layer Decomposition Meets Light-Effects Suppressioncited by 73
  16. 2021Real-time Image Enhancer via Learnable Spatial-aware 3D Lookup Tablescited by 65
  17. 2021Adaptive Unfolding Total Variation Network for Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 55
  18. 2017Fast Image Processing with Fully-Convolutional Networkscited by 41
  19. 2022Abandoning the Bayer-Filter to See in the Darkcited by 40
  20. 2022GCFSR: a Generative and Controllable Face Super Resolution Method Without Facial and GAN Priorscited by 39
  21. 2022EDTER: Edge Detection with Transformercited by 35
  22. 2019Unpaired Image Enhancement Featuring Reinforcement-Learning-Controlled Image Editing Softwarecited by 34
  23. 2021Semantically Contrastive Learning for Low-light Image Enhancementcited by 31
  24. 2021HLA-Face: Joint High-Low Adaptation for Low Light Face Detectioncited by 28
  25. 2020Towards Fast and Light-Weight Restoration of Dark Imagescited by 24
  26. 2021Progressive Joint Low-light Enhancement and Noise Removal for Raw Imagescited by 16
  27. 2021Deep Edge-Aware Interactive Colorization against Color-Bleeding Effectscited by 12
  28. 2018Gradient-Based Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 1

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 6; 2024: 29; 2025: 28; 2026: 15.

78 papers.

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  1. 2024OneRestore: A Universal Restoration Framework for Composite Degradationcited by 91
  2. 2024LightenDiffusion: Unsupervised Low-Light Image Enhancement with Latent-Retinex Diffusion Modelscited by 70
  3. 2023Reti-Diff: Illumination Degradation Image Restoration with Retinex-based Latent Diffusion Modelcited by 69
  4. 2024Perceive-IR: Learning to Perceive Degradation Better for All-in-One Image Restorationcited by 60
  5. 2024Towards Robust Event-guided Low-Light Image Enhancement: A Large-Scale Real-World Event-Image Dataset and Novel Approachcited by 48
  6. 2024GLARE: Low Light Image Enhancement via Generative Latent Feature based Codebook Retrievalcited by 33
  7. 2025UnfoldIR: Rethinking Deep Unfolding Network in Illumination Degradation Image Restorationcited by 21
  8. 2024LuSh-NeRF: Lighting up and Sharpening NeRFs for Low-light Scenescited by 16
  9. 2024Color Shift Estimation-and-Correction for Image Enhancementcited by 14
  10. 2024LLEMamba: Low-Light Enhancement via Relighting-Guided Mamba with Deep Unfolding Networkcited by 14
  11. 2024Fast High Dynamic Range Radiance Fields for Dynamic Scenescited by 13
  12. 2024EvLight++: Low-Light Video Enhancement with an Event Camera: A Large-Scale Real-World Dataset, Novel Method, and Morecited by 13
38 more
  1. 2025Low-Light Image Enhancement using Event-Based Illumination Estimationcited by 12
  2. 2025CWNet: Causal Wavelet Network for Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 10
  3. 2024A Comprehensive Survey on Underwater Image Enhancement Based on Deep Learningcited by 9
  4. 2024You Only Look Around: Learning Illumination Invariant Feature for Low-light Object Detectioncited by 9
  5. 2023Enlighten Anything: When Segment Anything Model Meets Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 8
  6. 2023DiffLLE: Diffusion-guided Domain Calibration for Unsupervised Low-light Image Enhancementcited by 8
  7. 2023Geometric-Aware Low-Light Image and Video Enhancement via Depth Guidancecited by 7
  8. 2024SAUGE: Taming SAM for Uncertainty-Aligned Multi-Granularity Edge Detectioncited by 7
  9. 2025EvoIR: Towards All-in-One Image Restoration via Evolutionary Frequency Modulationcited by 7
  10. 2024Boosting Image Restoration via Priors from Pre-trained Modelscited by 6
  11. 2024Unsupervised Image Prior via Prompt Learning and CLIP Semantic Guidance for Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 6
  12. 2024DI-Retinex: Digital-Imaging Retinex Theory for Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 5
  13. 2024Low-Light Video Enhancement via Spatial-Temporal Consistent Decompositioncited by 5
  14. 2025SEE: See Everything Every Time -- Adaptive Brightness Adjustment for Broad Light Range Images via Eventscited by 5
  15. 2024LMT-GP: Combined Latent Mean-Teacher and Gaussian Process for Semi-supervised Low-light Image Enhancementcited by 4
  16. 2024KAN See In the Darkcited by 4
  17. 2024Chain-of-Restoration: Multi-Task Image Restoration Models are Zero-Shot Step-by-Step Universal Image Restorerscited by 4
  18. 2025Structure-guided Diffusion Transformer for Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 4
  19. 2025ClusIR: Towards Cluster-Guided All-in-One Image Restorationcited by 4
  20. 2023Enlighten-Your-Voice: When Multimodal Meets Zero-shot Low-light Image Enhancementcited by 3
  21. 2024AoSRNet: All-in-One Scene Recovery Networks via Multi-knowledge Integrationcited by 3
  22. 2025Illuminating Darkness: Learning to Enhance Low-light Images In-the-Wildcited by 3
  23. 2025Degradation-Consistent Learning via Bidirectional Diffusion for Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 3
  24. 2025SPJFNet: Self-Mining Prior-Guided Joint Frequency Enhancement for Ultra-Efficient Dark Image Restorationcited by 3
  25. 2026TPGDiff: Hierarchical Triple-Prior Guided Diffusion for Image Restorationcited by 3
  26. 2023ClassLIE: Structure- and Illumination-Adaptive Classification for Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 2
  27. 2024CodeEnhance: A Codebook-Driven Approach for Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 2
  28. 2024Enhancing Nighttime UAV Tracking with Light Distribution Suppressioncited by 2
  29. 2024Leveraging Content and Context Cues for Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 2
  30. 2025TS-Diff: Two-Stage Diffusion Model for Low-Light RAW Image Enhancementcited by 2
  31. 2025DarkDiff: Advancing Low-Light Raw Enhancement by Retasking Diffusion Models for Camera ISPcited by 2
  32. 2025HVI-CIDNet+: Beyond Extreme Darkness for Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 2
  33. 2025DEPFusion: Dual-Domain Enhancement and Priority-Guided Mamba Fusion for UAV Multispectral Object Detectioncited by 2
  34. 2025Luminance-Aware Statistical Quantization: Unsupervised Hierarchical Learning for Illumination Enhancementcited by 2
  35. 2025Enhancing Diffusion-based Restoration Models via Difficulty-Adaptive Reinforcement Learning with IQA Rewardcited by 2
  36. 2024Troublemaker Learning for Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 1
  37. 2024Optimizing 4D Lookup Table for Low-light Video Enhancement via Wavelet Prioricited by 1
  38. 2024Low-Light Enhancement Effect on Classification and Detection: An Empirical Studycited by 1

50 most cited of 78 All 78 (JSON)