NTIRE 2024 Challenge on Low Light Image Enhancement: Methods and Results
Not on the map. Why?
Abstract (arXiv)
This paper reviews the NTIRE 2024 low light image enhancement challenge, highlighting the proposed solutions and results. The aim of this challenge is to discover an effective network design or solution capable of generating brighter, clearer, and visually appealing results when dealing with a variety of conditions, including ultra-high resolution (4K and beyond), non-uniform illumination, backlighting, extreme darkness, and night scenes. A notable total of 428 participants registered for the challenge, with 22 teams ultimately making valid submissions. This paper meticulously evaluates the state-of-the-art advancements in enhancing low-light images, reflecting the significant progress and creativity in this field.
Key facts. Cited by 26 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 45 of its 80 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 22 Apr 2024.
Builds on
45 of 80 references.
References · 45
- 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
- 2014Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognitioncited by 15,267
- 2018The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metriccited by 11,029
- 2016SGDR: Stochastic Gradient Descent with Warm Restartscited by 4,993
- 2023Mamba: Linear-Time Sequence Modeling with Selective State Spacescited by 4,616
- 2016Photo-Realistic Single Image Super-Resolution Using a Generative Adversarial Networkcited by 1,898
- 2024VMamba: Visual State Space Modelcited by 955
- 2018Deep Retinex Decomposition for Low-Light Enhancementcited by 720
- 2022Simple Baselines for Image Restorationcited by 701
- 2020Zero-Reference Deep Curve Estimation for Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 541
- 2020Learning Enriched Features for Real Image Restoration and Enhancementcited by 311
- 2020Retinex-inspired Unrolling with Cooperative Prior Architecture Search for Low-light Image Enhancementcited by 303
33 more
- 2018An Intriguing Failing of Convolutional Neural Networks and the CoordConv Solutioncited by 302
- 2023DiffIR: Efficient Diffusion Model for Image Restorationcited by 253
- 2023Retinexformer: One-stage Retinex-based Transformer for Low-light Image Enhancementcited by 228
- 2023Image Restoration with Mean-Reverting Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 182
- 2022Ultra-High-Definition Low-Light Image Enhancement: A Benchmark and Transformer-Based Methodcited by 174
- 2022Learning Enriched Features for Fast Image Restoration and Enhancementcited by 150
- 2024InstructIR: High-Quality Image Restoration Following Human Instructionscited by 139
- 2017Fast and Accurate Image Super-Resolution with Deep Laplacian Pyramid Networkscited by 138
- 2023Low-Light Image Enhancement with Wavelet-based Diffusion Modelscited by 126
- 2021Mask-guided Spectral-wise Transformer for Efficient Hyperspectral Image Reconstructioncited by 110
- 2022LEDNet: Joint Low-light Enhancement and Deblurring in the Darkcited by 95
- 2023Implicit Neural Representation for Cooperative Low-light Image Enhancementcited by 92
- 2023Global Structure-Aware Diffusion Process for Low-Light Image Enhancementcited by 92
- 2023Refusion: Enabling Large-Size Realistic Image Restoration with Latent-Space Diffusion Modelscited by 86
- 2022MST++: Multi-stage Spectral-wise Transformer for Efficient Spectral Reconstructioncited by 72
- 2023Structure-Aware Sparse-View X-ray 3D Reconstructioncited by 70
- 2022Degradation-Aware Unfolding Half-Shuffle Transformer for Spectral Compressive Imagingcited by 66
- 2020Learning Delicate Local Representations for Multi-Person Pose Estimationcited by 65
- 2021Improving Image Restoration by Revisiting Global Information Aggregationcited by 60
- 2023Zero-Shot Noise2Noise: Efficient Image Denoising without any Datacited by 59
- 2024The Ninth NTIRE 2024 Efficient Super-Resolution Challenge Reportcited by 57
- 2024NTIRE 2024 Challenge on Image Super-Resolution (x4): Methods and Resultscited by 40
- 2021DW-GAN: A Discrete Wavelet Transform GAN for NonHomogeneous Dehazingcited by 38
- 2024NTIRE 2024 Challenge on Short-form UGC Video Quality Assessment: Methods and Resultscited by 29
- 2023Binarized Spectral Compressive Imagingcited by 23
- 2022Self-Calibrated Efficient Transformer for Lightweight Super-Resolutioncited by 20
- 2021A Two-branch Neural Network for Non-homogeneous Dehazing via Ensemble Learningcited by 16
- 2023Breaking Through the Haze: An Advanced Non-Homogeneous Dehazing Method based on Fast Fourier Convolution and ConvNeXtcited by 8
- 2024Deep Portrait Quality Assessment. A NTIRE 2024 Challenge Surveycited by 7
- 2023QLABGrad: a Hyperparameter-Free and Convergence-Guaranteed Scheme for Deep Learningcited by 6
- 2022Real-Time Under-Display Cameras Image Restoration and HDR on Mobile Devicescited by 5
- 2020Light Weight Residual Dense Attention Net for Spectral Reconstruction from RGB Imagescited by 4
- 2021Total-Body Low-Dose CT Image Denoising using Prior Knowledge Transfer Technique with Contrastive Regularization Mechanismcited by 3
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2024: 7; 2025: 12; 2026: 7.
26 papers.
Sort:
By area:
- 2024DarkIR: Robust Low-Light Image Restorationcited by 48
- 2025MobileIE: An Extremely Lightweight and Effective ConvNet for Real-Time Image Enhancement on Mobile Devicescited by 12
- 2024NTIRE 2024 Restore Any Image Model (RAIM) in the Wild Challengecited by 9
- 2024Deep RAW Image Super-Resolution. A NTIRE 2024 Challenge Surveycited by 6
- 2025Towards Scale-Aware Low-Light Enhancement via Structure-Guided Transformer Designcited by 5
- 2025Dark-EvGS: Event Camera as an Eye for Radiance Field in the Darkcited by 5
- 2025UltraFast-LiNET: Light-weight multi-scale shift convolutional network for real-time low-light image enhancementcited by 5
- 2024NTIRE 2024 Challenge on Night Photography Renderingcited by 4
- 20253rd Workshop on Maritime Computer Vision (MaCVi) 2025: Challenge Resultscited by 4
- 2025IGDNet: Zero-Shot Robust Underexposed Image Enhancement via Illumination-Guided and Denoisingcited by 4
- 2025Illuminating Darkness: Learning to Enhance Low-light Images In-the-Wildcited by 3
- 2024From Darkness to Detail: Frequency-Aware SSMs for Low-Light Visioncited by 2
14 more
- 2026RL-AWB: Deep Reinforcement Learning for Auto White Balance Correction in Low-Light Night-time Scenescited by 2
- 2026PixRestore: Unified Image Restoration via Pixel Diffusion Transformercited by 2
- 2025A Preliminary Study on GPT-Image Generation Model for Image Restorationcited by 1
- 2025NTIRE 2025 Image Shadow Removal Challenge Reportcited by 1
- 2025NTIRE 2025 Challenge on Low Light Image Enhancement: Methods and Resultscited by 1
- 2026Anchor then Polish for Low-light Enhancementcited by 1
- 2024Technique Report of CVPR 2024 PBDL Challengescited by 0
- 2024NTIRE 2024 Challenge on Stereo Image Super-Resolution: Methods and Resultscited by 0
- 2025Tuning adaptive gamma correction (TAGC) for enhancing images in low lighcited by 0
- 2025Diffusion Models for Low-Light Image Enhancement: A Multi-Perspective Taxonomy and Performance Analysiscited by 0
- 2026Real-Time Underwater Image Enhancement via Frequency-Guided Dual-Path Attentioncited by 0
- 2026WREN: Low Light Image Enhancement Using Retinex theory-based Double U-Net-like Structurescited by 0
- 2026The Devil is in the Dark Pixels: Toward Brightness Bias-Robust Denoisingcited by 0
- 2026Rethinking Image Processing for the Age of AI: A Problem-First Framework for Scientific Progresscited by 0
- 2026Rethinking Image Processing for the Age of AI: A Problem-First Framework for Scientific Progress27 Aug 2026
- 2026PixRestore: Unified Image Restoration via Pixel Diffusion Transformer17 Aug 2026
- 2026WREN: Low Light Image Enhancement Using Retinex theory-based Double U-Net-like Structures17 Jul 2026
- 2026The Devil is in the Dark Pixels: Toward Brightness Bias-Robust Denoising15 Jul 2026
- 2026Real-Time Underwater Image Enhancement via Frequency-Guided Dual-Path Attention29 Jun 2026
- 2026Anchor then Polish for Low-light Enhancement16 Mar 2026
- 2026RL-AWB: Deep Reinforcement Learning for Auto White Balance Correction in Low-Light Night-time Scenes8 Jan 2026
- 2025UltraFast-LiNET: Light-weight multi-scale shift convolutional network for real-time low-light image enhancement2 Dec 2025
- 2025NTIRE 2025 Challenge on Low Light Image Enhancement: Methods and Results15 Oct 2025
- 2025Diffusion Models for Low-Light Image Enhancement: A Multi-Perspective Taxonomy and Performance Analysis7 Oct 2025
- 2025Tuning adaptive gamma correction (TAGC) for enhancing images in low ligh25 Jul 2025
- 2025Dark-EvGS: Event Camera as an Eye for Radiance Field in the Dark16 Jul 2025
14 more
- 2025IGDNet: Zero-Shot Robust Underexposed Image Enhancement via Illumination-Guided and Denoising3 Jul 2025
- 2025MobileIE: An Extremely Lightweight and Effective ConvNet for Real-Time Image Enhancement on Mobile Devices2 Jul 2025
- 2025NTIRE 2025 Image Shadow Removal Challenge Report18 Jun 2025
- 2025A Preliminary Study on GPT-Image Generation Model for Image Restoration8 May 2025
- 2025Towards Scale-Aware Low-Light Enhancement via Structure-Guided Transformer Design18 Apr 2025
- 2025Illuminating Darkness: Learning to Enhance Low-light Images In-the-Wild10 Mar 2025
- 20253rd Workshop on Maritime Computer Vision (MaCVi) 2025: Challenge Results17 Jan 2025
- 2024DarkIR: Robust Low-Light Image Restoration18 Dec 2024
- 2024NTIRE 2024 Challenge on Stereo Image Super-Resolution: Methods and Results25 Sep 2024
- 2024From Darkness to Detail: Frequency-Aware SSMs for Low-Light Vision19 Aug 2024
- 2024NTIRE 2024 Challenge on Night Photography Rendering18 Jun 2024
- 2024Technique Report of CVPR 2024 PBDL Challenges15 Jun 2024
- 2024NTIRE 2024 Restore Any Image Model (RAIM) in the Wild Challenge16 May 2024
- 2024Deep RAW Image Super-Resolution. A NTIRE 2024 Challenge Survey24 Apr 2024
- 2024DarkIR: Robust Low-Light Image Restorationcited by 48
- 2025MobileIE: An Extremely Lightweight and Effective ConvNet for Real-Time Image Enhancement on Mobile Devicescited by 12
- 2024NTIRE 2024 Restore Any Image Model (RAIM) in the Wild Challengecited by 9
- 2024Deep RAW Image Super-Resolution. A NTIRE 2024 Challenge Surveycited by 6
- 2025Towards Scale-Aware Low-Light Enhancement via Structure-Guided Transformer Designcited by 5
- 2025Dark-EvGS: Event Camera as an Eye for Radiance Field in the Darkcited by 5
- 2025UltraFast-LiNET: Light-weight multi-scale shift convolutional network for real-time low-light image enhancementcited by 5
- 2024NTIRE 2024 Challenge on Night Photography Renderingcited by 4
- 20253rd Workshop on Maritime Computer Vision (MaCVi) 2025: Challenge Resultscited by 4
- 2025IGDNet: Zero-Shot Robust Underexposed Image Enhancement via Illumination-Guided and Denoisingcited by 4
- 2025Illuminating Darkness: Learning to Enhance Low-light Images In-the-Wildcited by 3
- 2024From Darkness to Detail: Frequency-Aware SSMs for Low-Light Visioncited by 2
12 most cited of 24 All 24 (JSON)
- 2026Rethinking Image Processing for the Age of AI: A Problem-First Framework for Scientific Progress27 Aug 2026
- 2026WREN: Low Light Image Enhancement Using Retinex theory-based Double U-Net-like Structures17 Jul 2026
- 2026The Devil is in the Dark Pixels: Toward Brightness Bias-Robust Denoising15 Jul 2026
- 2026Real-Time Underwater Image Enhancement via Frequency-Guided Dual-Path Attention29 Jun 2026
- 2026Anchor then Polish for Low-light Enhancement16 Mar 2026
- 2026RL-AWB: Deep Reinforcement Learning for Auto White Balance Correction in Low-Light Night-time Scenes8 Jan 2026
- 2025UltraFast-LiNET: Light-weight multi-scale shift convolutional network for real-time low-light image enhancement2 Dec 2025
- 2025NTIRE 2025 Challenge on Low Light Image Enhancement: Methods and Results15 Oct 2025
- 2025Tuning adaptive gamma correction (TAGC) for enhancing images in low ligh25 Jul 2025
- 2025Dark-EvGS: Event Camera as an Eye for Radiance Field in the Dark16 Jul 2025
- 2025IGDNet: Zero-Shot Robust Underexposed Image Enhancement via Illumination-Guided and Denoising3 Jul 2025
- 2025MobileIE: An Extremely Lightweight and Effective ConvNet for Real-Time Image Enhancement on Mobile Devices2 Jul 2025
12 newest of 24 All 24 (JSON)