# A Physically-Grounded Attack and Adaptive Defense Framework for Real-World Low-Light Image Enhancement

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.14304 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.14304/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 47 of its 66 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 47)

- [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)
- [Restormer: Efficient Transformer for High-Resolution Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09881/) (2021)
- [Uformer: A General U-Shaped Transformer for Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.03106/) (2021)
- [Deep Multi-scale Convolutional Neural Network for Dynamic Scene Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.02177/) (2016)
- [Zero-Reference Deep Curve Estimation for Low-Light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.06826/) (2020)
- [Toward Real-World Single Image Super-Resolution: A New Benchmark and A New Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.00523/) (2019)
- [Recovering Realistic Texture in Image Super-resolution by Deep Spatial Feature Transform](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.02815/) (2018)
- [Unprocessing Images for Learned Raw Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.11127/) (2018)
- [CycleISP: Real Image Restoration via Improved Data Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.07761/) (2020)
- [Efficient Frequency Domain-based Transformers for High-Quality Image Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12250/) (2022)
- [The 2018 PIRM Challenge on Perceptual Image Super-resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.07517/) (2018)
- [Low-Light Image Enhancement with Wavelet-based Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00306/) (2023)
- [LEDNet: Joint Low-light Enhancement and Deblurring in the Dark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.03373/) (2022)
- [Implicit Neural Representation for Cooperative Low-light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11722/) (2023)
- [OneRestore: A Universal Restoration Framework for Composite Degradation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.04621/) (2024)
- [Embedding Fourier for Ultra-High-Definition Low-Light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.11831/) (2023)
- [Intriguing Findings of Frequency Selection for Image Deblurring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11745/) (2021)
- [Low-Light Image Enhancement via Structure Modeling and Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.05839/) (2023)
- [Practical Deep Raw Image Denoising on Mobile Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.06935/) (2020)
- [LightenDiffusion: Unsupervised Low-Light Image Enhancement with Latent-Retinex Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.08939/) (2024)
- [Physics-based Noise Modeling for Extreme Low-light Photography](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.02158/) (2021)
- [FourLLIE: Boosting Low-Light Image Enhancement by Fourier Frequency Information](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03033/) (2023)
- [HVI: A New Color Space for Low-light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20272/) (2025)
- [Rethinking Noise Synthesis and Modeling in Raw Denoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.04756/) (2021)
- [Retinexmamba: Retinex-based Mamba for Low-light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.03349/) (2024)
- [Learning Semantic-Aware Knowledge Guidance for Low-Light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07039/) (2023)
- [Wave-Mamba: Wavelet State Space Model for Ultra-High-Definition Low-Light Image Enhancement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.01276/) (2024)
- [Low-Light Image Enhancement with Illumination-Aware Gamma Correction and Complete Image Modelling Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08220/) (2023)
- [GLARE: Low Light Image Enhancement via Generative Latent Feature based Codebook Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12431/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Limited illumination often causes severe physical noise and detail degradation in images. Existing Low-Light Image Enhancement (LLIE) methods frequently treat the enhancement process as a blind black-box mapping, overlooking the physical noise transformation during imaging, leading to suboptimal performance. To address this, we propose a novel LLIE approach, conceptually formulated as a physics-based attack and display-adaptive defense paradigm. Specifically, on the attack side, we establish a physics-based Degradation Synthesis (PDS) pipeline. Unlike standard data augmentation, PDS explicitly models Image Signal Processor (ISP) inversion to the RAW domain, injects physically plausible photon and read noise, and re-projects the data to the sRGB domain. This generates high-fidelity training pairs with explicitly parameterized degradation vectors, effectively simulating realistic attacks on clean signals. On the defense side, we construct a dual-layer fortified system. A noise predictor estimates degradation parameters from the input sRGB image. These estimates guide a degradation-aware Mixture of Experts (DA-MoE), which dynamically routes features to experts specialized in handling specific noise intensities. Furthermore, we introduce an Adaptive Metric Defense (AMD) mechanism, dynamically calibrating the feature embedding space based on noise severity, ensuring robust representation learning under severe degradation. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our approach offers significant plug-and-play performance enhancement for existing benchmark LLIE methods, effectively suppressing real-world noise while preserving structural fidelity. The sourced code is available at https://github.com/bywlzts/Attack-defense-llie.