# Uncertainty-Aware Spatial Color Correlation for Low-Light Image Enhancement

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.04176 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.04176/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 17 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Aug 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 17 of 17)

- [Mamba: Linear-Time Sequence Modeling with Selective State Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00752/) (2023)
- [Restormer: Efficient Transformer for High-Resolution Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09881/) (2021)
- [Pre-Trained Image Processing Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.00364/) (2020)
- [Uformer: A General U-Shaped Transformer for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.03106/) (2021)
- [EnlightenGAN: Deep Light Enhancement without Paired Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.06972/) (2019)
- [Learning Enriched Features for Real Image Restoration and Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.06792/) (2020)
- [R2RNet: Low-light Image Enhancement via Real-low to Real-normal Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.14501/) (2021)
- [Entropy is not Enough for Test-Time Adaptation: From the Perspective of Disentangled Factors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07366/) (2024)
- [Unsupervised and Semi-supervised Learning with Categorical Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06390/) (2015)
- [Low-Light Image Enhancement via Structure Modeling and Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.05839/) (2023)
- [Low-light Image Enhancement via Breaking Down the Darkness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.15557/) (2021)
- [FourLLIE: Boosting Low-Light Image Enhancement by Fourier Frequency Information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03033/) (2023)
- [Zero-Reference Low-Light Enhancement via Physical Quadruple Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12933/) (2024)
- [MambaLLIE: Implicit Retinex-Aware Low Light Enhancement with Global-then-Local State Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.16105/) (2024)
- [Correlation Matching Transformation Transformers for UHD Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.00629/) (2024)
- [CLE Diffusion: Controllable Light Enhancement Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.06725/) (2023)
- [SUBIC: A supervised, structured binary code for image search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.02932/) (2017)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Most existing low-light image enhancement approaches primarily focus on architectural innovations, while often overlooking the intrinsic uncertainty within feature representations particularly under extremely dark conditions where degraded gradient and noise dominance severely impair model reliability and causal reasoning. To address these issues, we propose U2CLLIE, a novel framework that integrates uncertainty-aware enhancement and spatial-color causal correlation modeling. From the perspective of entropy-based uncertainty, our framework introduces two key components: (1) An Uncertainty-Aware Dual-domain Denoise (UaD) Module, which leverages Gaussian-Guided Adaptive Frequency Domain Feature Enhancement (G2AF) to suppress frequency-domain noise and optimize entropy-driven representations. This module enhances spatial texture extraction and frequency-domain noise suppression/structure refinement, effectively mitigating gradient vanishing and noise dominance. (2) A hierarchical causality-aware framework, where a Luminance Enhancement Network (LEN) first performs coarse brightness enhancement on dark regions. Then, during the encoder-decoder phase, two asymmetric causal correlation modeling modules Neighborhood Correlation State Space (NeCo) and Adaptive Spatial-Color Calibration (AsC) collaboratively construct hierarchical causal constraints. These modules reconstruct and reinforce neighborhood structure and color consistency in the feature space. Extensive experiments demonstrate that U2CLLIE achieves state-of-the-art performance across multiple benchmark datasets, exhibiting robust performance and strong generalization across various scenes.