# A Non-Uniform Low-Light Image Enhancement Method with Multi-Scale Attention Transformer and Luminance Consistency Loss

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.16498 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.16498/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 20 of its 52 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 27 Dec 2023.

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

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08155/) (2016)
- [SwinIR: Image Restoration Using Swin Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10257/) (2021)
- [ESRGAN: Enhanced Super-Resolution Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.00219/) (2018)
- [Uformer: A General U-Shaped Transformer for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.03106/) (2021)
- [Deep Retinex Decomposition for Low-Light Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.04560/) (2018)
- [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)
- [FFA-Net: Feature Fusion Attention Network for Single Image Dehazing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.07559/) (2019)
- [LLNet: A Deep Autoencoder Approach to Natural Low-light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.03995/) (2015)
- [StyTr2: Image Style Transfer with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.14576/) (2021)
- [Getting to Know Low-light Images with The Exclusively Dark Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.11227/) (2018)
- [ArtFlow: Unbiased Image Style Transfer via Reversible Neural Flows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16877/) (2021)
- [Low-light Image Enhancement via Breaking Down the Darkness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.15557/) (2021)
- [Single-source Domain Expansion Network for Cross-Scene Hyperspectral Image Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.01634/) (2022)
- [Lightweight image super-resolution with enhanced CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.04344/) (2020)
- [Real-time Multi-Class Helmet Violation Detection Using Few-Shot Data Sampling Technique and YOLOv8](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08256/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [ALEN: A Dual-Approach for Uniform and Non-Uniform Low-Light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.19708/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Low-light image enhancement aims to improve the perception of images collected in dim environments and provide high-quality data support for image recognition tasks. When dealing with photos captured under non-uniform illumination, existing methods cannot adaptively extract the differentiated luminance information, which will easily cause over-exposure and under-exposure. From the perspective of unsupervised learning, we propose a multi-scale attention Transformer named MSATr, which sufficiently extracts local and global features for light balance to improve the visual quality. Specifically, we present a multi-scale window division scheme, which uses exponential sequences to adjust the window size of each layer. Within different-sized windows, the self-attention computation can be refined, ensuring the pixel-level feature processing capability of the model. For feature interaction across windows, a global transformer branch is constructed to provide comprehensive brightness perception and alleviate exposure problems. Furthermore, we propose a loop training strategy, using the diverse images generated by weighted mixing and a luminance consistency loss to improve the model's generalization ability effectively. Extensive experiments on several benchmark datasets quantitatively and qualitatively prove that our MSATr is superior to state-of-the-art low-light image enhancement methods, and the enhanced images have more natural brightness and outstanding details. The code is released at https://github.com/fang001021/MSATr.