# ALEN: A Dual-Approach for Uniform and Non-Uniform Low-Light Image Enhancement

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.19708 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.19708/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 43 of its 96 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Jul 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 43)

- [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)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [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)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08155/) (2016)
- [MUSIQ: Multi-scale Image Quality Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.05997/) (2021)
- [Transformers in Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.01169/) (2021)
- [Deep Retinex Decomposition for Low-Light Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.04560/) (2018)
- [A Survey on Visual Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.12556/) (2020)
- [Zero-Reference Deep Curve Estimation for Low-Light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.06826/) (2020)
- [Retinex-inspired Unrolling with Cooperative Prior Architecture Search for Low-light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05609/) (2020)
- [Retinexformer: One-stage Retinex-based Transformer for Low-light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.06705/) (2023)
- [A Survey of the Recent Architectures of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.06032/) (2019)
- [Low-Light Image Enhancement with Normalizing Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.05923/) (2021)
- [Ultra-High-Definition Low-Light Image Enhancement: A Benchmark and Transformer-Based Method](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.11548/) (2022)
- [Learning Image-adaptive 3D Lookup Tables for High Performance Photo Enhancement in Real-time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.14468/) (2020)
- [Diff-Retinex: Rethinking Low-light Image Enhancement with A Generative Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.13164/) (2023)
- [Iterative Prompt Learning for Unsupervised Backlit Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17569/) (2023)
- [R2RNet: Low-light Image Enhancement via Real-low to Real-normal Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.14501/) (2021)
- [Global Structure-Aware Diffusion Process for Low-Light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.17577/) (2023)
- [You Only Need 90K Parameters to Adapt Light: A Light Weight Transformer for Image Enhancement and Exposure Correction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.14871/) (2022)
- [Unsupervised Night Image Enhancement: When Layer Decomposition Meets Light-Effects Suppression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.10564/) (2022)
- [Attention Guided Low-light Image Enhancement with a Large Scale Low-light Simulation Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.00682/) (2019)
- [Low-light Image Enhancement via Breaking Down the Darkness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.15557/) (2021)
- [Multitask AET with Orthogonal Tangent Regularity for Dark Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.03346/) (2022)
- [Retinexmamba: Retinex-based Mamba for Low-light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.03349/) (2024)
- [Adaptive Unfolding Total Variation Network for Low-Light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.00984/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Low-light image enhancement is an important task in computer vision, essential for improving the visibility and quality of images captured in non-optimal lighting conditions. Inadequate illumination can lead to significant information loss and poor image quality, impacting various applications such as surveillance. photography, or even autonomous driving. In this regard, automated methods have been developed to automatically adjust illumination in the image for a better visual perception. Current enhancement techniques often use specific datasets to enhance low-light images, but still present challenges when adapting to diverse real-world conditions, where illumination degradation may be localized to specific regions. To address this challenge, the Adaptive Light Enhancement Network (ALEN) is introduced, whose main approach is the use of a classification mechanism to determine whether local or global illumination enhancement is required. Subsequently, estimator networks adjust illumination based on this classification and simultaneously enhance color fidelity. ALEN integrates the Light Classification Network (LCNet) for illuminance categorization, complemented by the Single-Channel Network (SCNet), and Multi-Channel Network (MCNet) for precise estimation of illumination and color, respectively. Extensive experiments on publicly available datasets for low-light conditions were carried out to underscore ALEN's robust generalization capabilities, demonstrating superior performance in both quantitative metrics and qualitative assessments when compared to recent state-of-the-art methods. The ALEN not only enhances image quality in terms of visual perception but also represents an advancement in high-level vision tasks, such as semantic segmentation, as presented in this work. The code of this method is available at https://github.com/xingyumex/ALEN