# Row-Column Separated Attention Based Low-Light Image/Video Enhancement

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.07428 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.07428/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 29 of its 58 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Squeeze-and-Excitation Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.01507/) (2017)
- [Fast R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1504.08083/) (2015)
- [Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08155/) (2016)
- [CBAM: Convolutional Block Attention Module](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.06521/) (2018)
- [Restormer: Efficient Transformer for High-Resolution Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09881/) (2021)
- [ViViT: A Video Vision Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15691/) (2021)
- [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)
- [ECA-Net: Efficient Channel Attention for Deep Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.03151/) (2019)
- [EnlightenGAN: Deep Light Enhancement without Paired Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.06972/) (2019)
- [GMFlow: Learning Optical Flow via Global Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.13680/) (2021)
- [Learning Enriched Features for Real Image Restoration and Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.06792/) (2020)
- [MAXIM: Multi-Axis MLP for Image Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.02973/) (2022)
- [Learning Blind Video Temporal Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.00449/) (2018)
- [Retinexformer: One-stage Retinex-based Transformer for Low-light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.06705/) (2023)
- [LLNet: A Deep Autoencoder Approach to Natural Low-light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.03995/) (2015)
- [Learning to Enhance Low-Light Image via Zero-Reference Deep Curve Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00860/) (2021)
- [Ultra-High-Definition Low-Light Image Enhancement: A Benchmark and Transformer-Based Method](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.11548/) (2022)
- [Low-Light Image and Video Enhancement Using Deep Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10729/) (2021)
- [R2RNet: Low-light Image Enhancement via Real-low to Real-normal Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.14501/) (2021)
- [LEDNet: Joint Low-light Enhancement and Deblurring in the Dark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.03373/) (2022)
- [Unsupervised Night Image Enhancement: When Layer Decomposition Meets Light-Effects Suppression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.10564/) (2022)
- [Laneformer: Object-aware Row-Column Transformers for Lane Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09830/) (2022)
- [Half Wavelet Attention on M-Net+ for Low-Light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.01296/) (2022)
- [Deep Parametric 3D Filters for Joint Video Denoising and Illumination Enhancement in Video Super Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.01797/) (2022)
- [Long Scale Error Control in Low Light Image and Video Enhancement Using Equivariance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.01334/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

U-Net structure is widely used for low-light image/video enhancement. The enhanced images result in areas with large local noise and loss of more details without proper guidance for global information. Attention mechanisms can better focus on and use global information. However, attention to images could significantly increase the number of parameters and computations. We propose a Row-Column Separated Attention module (RCSA) inserted after an improved U-Net. The RCSA module's input is the mean and maximum of the row and column of the feature map, which utilizes global information to guide local information with fewer parameters. We propose two temporal loss functions to apply the method to low-light video enhancement and maintain temporal consistency. Extensive experiments on the LOL, MIT Adobe FiveK image, and SDSD video datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. The code is publicly available at https://github.com/cq-dong/URCSA.