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This document is a guest editorial from the journal IET Computer Vision, discussing the topic of advanced image restoration and enhancement. The editorial highlights the challenges faced in this field, such as the complexity of degradation models for real-world low-quality images and the difficulty of acquiring paired data. It also introduces a special issue of the journal that includes five accepted papers, which focus on video reconstruction and image super-resolution. The editorial concludes by providing brief summaries of each accepted paper. The guest editors of the special issue are also mentioned, along with their research interests and affiliations. [Extracted from the article]

Identifying the ash accumulation generated on the water-cooled walls of the waste incinerator is essential for the cleanup by the robotic arm. This paper improves a new algorithm based on YOLOv8n, which can identify the ash accumulation position on the water-cooled wall quickly and accurately. Firstly, the multi-scale fusion image enhancement algorithm is used to improve the sharpness and contrast of the image and enrich the details of the image. Secondly, the backbone feature extraction network of YOLOv8n is replaced by Mobilenetv3 network, which reduces the parameters in the model greatly. Finally, this paper improves a new attention mechanism AWGAM (Add Weight Global Attention Mechanism) based on GAM (Global Attention Mechanism), which can better integrate the feature information between different dimensions and improve the learning ability of the model. AWGAM is added to the backbone of the model. The experimental results show that compared with the original YOLOv8n model, the improved YOLOv8n model has 59.9% fewer parameters, 4.4% higher precision, 8.8% higher recall, 3.2% higher mAP50 (mean Average Precision) and 8.8% higher mAP50-95. This model has made remarkable progress on the basis of the original algorithm, and has strong competitiveness compared with other advanced target detection models. The lightweight and high accuracy of ash accumulation detection offered by the proposed model presents promising applications in ash accumulation detection tasks of water-cooled walls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the development of biometric identification technology, finger vein identification has received more and more widespread attention for its security, efficiency, and stability. However, because of the performance of the current standard finger vein image acquisition device and the complex internal organization of the finger, the acquired images are often heavily degraded and have lost their texture characteristics. This makes the topology of the finger veins inconspicuous or even difficult to distinguish, greatly affecting the identification accuracy. Therefore, this paper proposes a finger vein image recovery and enhancement algorithm using atmospheric scattering theory. Firstly, to normalize the local over-bright and over-dark regions of finger vein images within a certain threshold, the Gamma transform method is improved in this paper to correct and measure the gray value of a given image. Then, we reconstruct the image based on atmospheric scattering theory and design a pixel mutation filter to segment the venous and non-venous contact zones. Finally, the degraded finger vein images are recovered and enhanced by global image gray value normalization. Experiments on SDUMLA-HMT and ZJ-UVM datasets show that our proposed method effectively achieves the recovery and enhancement of degraded finger vein images. The image restoration and enhancement algorithm proposed in this paper performs well in finger vein recognition using traditional methods, machine learning, and deep learning. The recognition accuracy of the processed image is improved by more than 10% compared to the original image. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Landslides are a kind of geological hazard with great destructive potential. When a landslide event occurs, a reliable landslide segmentation method is important for assessing the extent of the disaster and preventing secondary disasters. Although deep learning methods have been applied to improve the efficiency of landslide segmentation, there are still some problems that need to be solved, such as the poor segmentation due to the similarity between old landslide areas and the background features and missed detections of small-scale landslides. To tackle these challenges, a proposed high-resolution semantic segmentation algorithm for landslide scenes enhances the accuracy of landslide segmentation and addresses the challenge of missed detections in small-scale landslides. The network is based on the high-resolution network (HR-Net), which effectively integrates the efficient channel attention mechanism (efficient channel attention, ECA) into the network to enhance the representation quality of the feature maps. Moreover, the primary backbone of the high-resolution network is further enhanced to extract more profound semantic information. To improve the network's ability to perceive small-scale landslides, atrous spatial pyramid pooling (ASPP) with ECA modules is introduced. Furthermore, to address the issues arising from inadequate training and reduced accuracy due to the unequal distribution of positive and negative samples, the network employs a combined loss function. This combined loss function effectively supervises the training of the network. Finally, the paper enhances the Loess Plateau landslide dataset using a fractional-order-based image enhancement approach and conducts experimental comparisons on this enriched dataset to evaluate the enhanced network's performance. The experimental findings show that the proposed methodology achieves higher accuracy in segmentation performance compared to other networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, deep learning methods for low‐light image enhancement tasks mainly focus on the illumination of images, while neglecting the problems of image noise and feature loss. To address this issue, this paper proposes a novel low‐light image enhancement network called DAF‐Retinex, based on the Retinex‐Net. To address the issue of image noise, different from traditional image denoise methods, this paper utilizes a fully convolutional neural network to denoise the reflection component, additionally, a denoising loss function is introduced to suppress noise. For preserving image details and extracting features, this paper creatively introduces self‐calibrated convolutions into low‐light image enhancement tasks, furthermore, a feature augmented attention block consisting of feature‐guided attention (FGA) is designed for feature learning to effectively enhance image illumination and extract image detail features. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm in this paper effectively removes image noise and extracts detailed features, resulting in visually improved outcomes. On public datasets, the average improvement in objective evaluation metrics of image quality such as PSNR, SSIM, and NIQE are 1.13%, 4.12%, and 1.28%, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the continuous progress of science and technology, image processing techniques have been used increasingly in recent years. Image processing plays an indispensable role in the fields of computer vision, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, and related fields. Improvements in basic algorithms and the development of new algorithms have resulted in considerable innovation and progress. This paper is devoted to finding new game applications in a branch of image processing. It introduces an analysis model proposed by the author and discusses the relationship between roughness in the frequency domain and visual image interpretation. By using the concept of roughness, we separated the image features into meaningful information and residual information and analysed the image in the frequency domain. The results were compared with those of traditional image processing methods. The starting point is the visual identification of a feature based on human interpretation. The image information was separated into meaningful features and the residual component to reduce the redundancy of the model. This allowed for a sparse representation of the feature information in the image. By analysing the meaningful features and residual components of an image separately, we established a relationship between the results and the original images. Parameters such as texture, morphology, and the degree of blurring were considered and we developed a parameter called "frequency roughness". The algorithm incorporates the concepts of frequency and roughness and the roughness is determined in the frequency domain. The frequency roughness algorithm successfully separated the rough features in the frequency domain and calculated the residual value in an image. This model provided more accurate image processing results than comparable methods. This paper includes an analysis and game applications of the proposed model for de-blurring, image enhancement, recognition, and other image processing tasks. Some game applications were successful, whereas others require further investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen increased interest in object detection‐based applications for fire detection in digital images and videos from edge devices. The environment's complexity and variability often lead to interference from factors such as fire and smoke characteristics, background noise, and camera settings like angle, sharpness, and exposure, which hampers the effectiveness of fire detection applications. Limited picture data for fire and smoke scenes further challenges model accuracy and robustness, resulting in high false detection and leakage rates. To address the need for efficient detection and adaptability to various environments, this paper focuses on (1) proposing a cloud‐edge collaborative architecture for real‐time fire and smoke detection, incorporating an iterative transfer learning strategy based on user feedback to enhance adaptability; (2) improving the detection capabilities of the base model YOLOv8 by enhancing the data augmentation method and introducing the coordinate attention mechanism to improve global feature extraction. The improved algorithm shows a 2‐point accuracy increase. After three iterations of transfer learning in the production environment, accuracy improves from 93.3% to 96.4%, and mAP0.5:0.95 increases by nearly 5 points. This program effectively addresses false detection issues in fire and smoke detection systems, demonstrating practical applicability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the continuous development of autonomous driving, traffic sign detection, as an essential subtask, has witnessed constant updates in corresponding technologies. Currently, traffic sign detection primarily confronts challenges such as the small size of detection targets and the complexity of detection scenarios. This paper focuses on detecting small traffic signs in low-light scenarios. To address these issues, this paper proposes a traffic sign detection method that integrates low-light image enhancement with small target detection, namely, LLE-STD. This method comprises two stages: low-light image enhancement and small target detection. Based on classic baseline models, we tailor the model structures by considering the requirements of lightweight traffic sign detection models and their adaptability to varying image qualities. The two stages are then coupled to form an end-to-end processing procedure. During experiments, we validate the performance of low-light image enhancement small target detection, and adaptability to images of different qualities using the public datasets GTSDB, TT-100K, and GLARE. Compared to classic models, LLE-STD demonstrates significant advantages. For example, the mAP results tested on the GLARE dataset show that LLE-STD outperforms RetinaNet by approximately 15%. This research can facilitate the practical application of deep learning-based intelligent methods in the field of autonomous driving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses image enhancement and 3D reconstruction techniques for dim scenes inside the vacuum chamber of a nuclear fusion reactor. First, an improved multi-scale Retinex low-light image enhancement algorithm with adaptive weights is designed. It can recover image detail information that is not visible in low-light environments, maintaining image clarity and contrast for easy observation. Second, according to the actual needs of target plate defect detection and 3D reconstruction inside the vacuum chamber, a defect reconstruction algorithm based on photometric stereo vision is proposed. To optimize the position of the light source, a light source illumination profile simulation system is designed in this paper to provide an optimized light array for crack detection inside vacuum chambers without the need for extensive experimental testing. Finally, a robotic platform mounted with a binocular stereo-vision camera is constructed and image enhancement and defect reconstruction experiments are performed separately. The results show that the above method can broaden the gray level of low-illumination images and improve the brightness value and contrast. The maximum depth error is less than 24.0% and the maximum width error is less than 15.3%, which achieves the goal of detecting and reconstructing the defects inside the vacuum chamber. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Personal credit assessment plays a crucial role in the financial system, which not only relates to the financial activities of individuals but also affects the overall credit system and economic health of society. However, the current problem of data imbalance affecting classification results in the field of personal credit assessment has not been fully solved. In order to solve this problem better, we propose a data-enhanced classification algorithm based on a Pixel Convolutional Neural Network (PixelCNN) and a Generative Adversarial Network (Wasserstein GAN, WGAN). Firstly, the historical data containing borrowers' borrowing information are transformed into grayscale maps; then, data enhancement of default images is performed using the improved PixelCNN-WGAN model; and finally, the expanded image dataset is inputted into the CNN, AlexNet, SqueezeNet, and MobileNetV2 for classification. The results on the real dataset LendingClub show that the data enhancement algorithm designed in this paper improves the accuracy of the four algorithms by 1.548–3.568% compared with the original dataset, which can effectively improve the classification effect of the credit data, and to a certain extent, it provides a new idea for the classification task in the field of personal credit assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the acquisition of infrared images in substations, low-quality images with poor contrast, blurred details, and missing texture information frequently appear, which adversely affects subsequent advanced visual tasks. To address this issue, this paper proposes an infrared image enhancement algorithm for substation equipment based on a self-attention cycle generative adversarial network (SA-CycleGAN). The proposed algorithm incorporates a self-attention mechanism into the CycleGAN model's transcoding network to improve the mapping ability of infrared image information, enhance image contrast, and reducing the number of model parameters. The addition of an efficient local attention mechanism (EAL) and a feature pyramid structure within the encoding network enhances the generator's ability to extract features and texture information from small targets in infrared substation equipment images, effectively improving image details. In the discriminator part, the model's performance is further enhanced by constructing a two-channel feature network. To accelerate the model's convergence, the loss function of the original CycleGAN is optimized. Compared to several mainstream image enhancement algorithms, the proposed algorithm improves the quality of low-quality infrared images by an average of 10.91% in color degree, 18.89% in saturation, and 29.82% in feature similarity indices. Additionally, the number of parameters in the proposed algorithm is reduced by 37.89% compared to the original model. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method in improving recognition accuracy is validated by the Centernet target recognition algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Featured Application: This paper is applied in the industrial monitoring of the stamping process, where vibrations are common, necessitating the use of image registration and homography estimation methods to align template images with test images. By employing machine-vision and image-processing techniques, the process is monitored in real-time to detect any anomalies, ultimately aiming to protect the stamping molds. Homography estimation is a crucial task in aligning template images with target images in stamping monitoring systems. To enhance the robustness and accuracy of homography estimation against random vibrations and lighting variations in stamping environments, this paper proposes an improved unsupervised homography estimation model. The model takes as input the channel-stacked template and target images and outputs the estimated homography matrix. First, a specialized deformable convolution module and Group Normalization (GN) layer are introduced to expand the receptive field and enhance the model's ability to learn rotational invariance when processing large, high-resolution images. Next, a multi-scale, multi-stage unsupervised homography estimation network structure is constructed to improve the accuracy of homography estimation by refining the estimation through multiple stages, thereby enhancing the model's resistance to scale variations. Finally, stamping monitoring image data is incorporated into the training through data fusion, with data augmentation techniques applied to randomly introduce various levels of perturbation, brightness, contrast, and filtering to improve the model's robustness to complex changes in the stamping environment, making it more suitable for monitoring applications in this specific industrial context. Compared to traditional methods, this approach provides better homography matrix estimation when handling images with low texture, significant lighting variations, or large viewpoint changes. Compared to other deep-learning-based homography estimation methods, it reduces estimation errors and performs better on stamping monitoring images, while also offering broader applicability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Underwater imagery is subject to distortion, and the presence of turbulence in the fluid medium poses difficulties in accurately discerning objects. To tackle these challenges pertaining to feature extraction, this research paper presents a novel approach called the multi-scale aware turbulence network (MATNet) method for underwater object identification. More specifically, the paper introduces a module known as the multi-scale feature extraction pyramid network module, which incorporates dense linking strategies and position learning strategies to preprocess object contour features and texture features. This module facilitates the efficient extraction of multi-scale features, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of the identification process. Following that, the extracted features undergo refinement through comparison with positive and negative samples. Ultimately, the study introduces multi-scale object recognition techniques and establishes a multi-scale object recognition network for the precise identification of underwater objects, utilizing the enhanced multi-scale features. This process entails rectifying the distorted image and subsequently recognizing the rectified object. Extensive experiments conducted on an underwater distorted image enhancement dataset demonstrate that the proposed method surpasses state-of-the-art approaches in both qualitative and quantitative evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accurate recognition of tree trunks is a prerequisite for precision orchard yield estimation. Facing the practical problems of complex orchard environment and large data flow, the existing object detection schemes suffer from key issues such as poor data quality, low timeliness and accuracy, and weak generalization ability. In this paper, an improved YOLOv8 is designed on the basis of data flow screening and enhancement for lightweight jujube tree trunk accurate detection. Firstly, the key frame extraction algorithm was proposed and utilized to efficiently screen the effective data. Secondly, the CLAHE image data enhancement method was proposed and used to enhance the data quality. Finally, the backbone of the YOLOv8 model was replaced with a GhostNetv2 structure for lightweight transformation, also introducing the improved CA_H attention mechanism. Extensive comparison and ablation results show that the average precision of the quality-enhanced dataset over that of the original dataset increases from 81.2% to 90.1%, and the YOLOv8s-GhostNetv2-CA_H model proposed in this paper reduces the model size by 19.5% compared to that of the YOLOv8s base model, with precision increasing by 2.4% to 92.3%, recall increasing by 1.4%, mAP@0.5 increasing by 1.8%, and FPS being 17.1% faster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To address the issues of fuzzy scene details, reduced definition, and poor visibility in images captured under non-uniform lighting conditions, this paper presents an algorithm for effectively enhancing such images. Firstly, an adaptive color balance method is employed to address the color differences in low-light images, ensuring a more uniform color distribution and yielding a low-light image with improved color consistency. Subsequently, the image obtained is transformed from the RGB space to the HSV space, wherein the multi-scale Gaussian function is utilized in conjunction with the Retinex theory to accurately extract the lighting components and reflection components. To further enhance the image quality, the lighting components are categorized into high-light areas and low-light areas based on their pixel mean values. The low-light areas undergo improvement through an enhanced adaptive gamma correction algorithm, while the high-light areas are enhanced using the Weber–Fechner law for optimal results. Then, each block area of the image is weighted and fused, leading to its conversion back to the RGB space. And a multi-scale detail enhancement algorithm is utilized to further enhance image details. Through comprehensive experiments comparing various methods based on subjective visual perception and objective quality metrics, the algorithm proposed in this paper convincingly demonstrates its ability to effectively enhance the brightness of non-uniformly illuminated areas. Moreover, the algorithm successfully retains details in high-light regions while minimizing the impact of non-uniform illumination on the overall image quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the pillar industry of coastal areas, aquaculture needs artificial intelligence technology to promote economic development. To realize the automation of the aquaculture industry, this paper proposes a new underwater object detection network: WBi-YOLOSF. It realizes the automatic classification and detection of aquatic products, improves the production efficiency of the aquaculture industry, and promotes its economic development. This paper creates an image dataset containing 15 aquatic products to lay the data foundation for model training. In the data preprocessing part, an underwater image enhancement algorithm is proposed to improve the quality of the data set effectively. Aiming at the problem of high false detection rate and missed detection rate of underwater dense small targets, a new data enhancement method was proposed to improve the training set's data quality comprehensively. Inspired by the weighted bidirectional feature pyramid network, this paper proposes a new feature extraction network: AU-BiFPN, which solves the gradient problem caused by the network hierarchy's deepening on enhancing the network's multi-scale feature fusion. The AU-BiFPN network structure is embedded into the YOLO series network framework, significantly improving the basic network's feature extraction and feature fusion ability and dramatically improving the prediction accuracy without affecting the network inference speed. Here, the swarm intelligence algorithm is introduced to optimize the model hyperparameters, accelerating the convergence speed of model training and significantly reducing the computational cost. At the same time, the model's accuracy is improved by a cliff. In addition, the Funnel Activation is introduced in the network's backbone, and the simple, parameter-free attention module is integrated, effectively improving the accuracy and speed of the model prediction. Ablation and comparison experiments show the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed model. Verified by the mean average precision and frame rate evaluation indicators, the experimental results of the WBi-YOLOSF target detection network can reach 0.982 and 203 frames per second, which are 1.4% and five frames per second higher than the network with the second score. In summary, this method can quickly and accurately identify aquatic products, realize real-time target detection of aquatic products, and lay the foundation for developing an aquaculture automation system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More and more underwater robots are deployed to investigate marine biodiversity autonomously, and tools are needed by underwater robots to discover and acknowledge marine life. This paper has proposed a convolutional neural network-based method for intelligent fish detection and recognition with a dataset used for training and testing generated and augmented from an open-source Fish Database regarding 6 different types. Firstly, to improve image quality, a hybrid image enhancement algorithm is used to preprocess underwater images with a weighted fusion strategy of multiple traditional methodologies and comparisons have been made to prove the effectiveness according to various indexes. Secondly, to increase detection and recognition accuracy, different attention modules are integrated into the YOLOv5m network structure and the convolutional block attention module(CBAM) has outperformed other modules in recall rate and mAP while maintaining the capability of real-time processing. Lastly, to meet real-time requirements, lightweight adjustments have been made to CBAM-YOLOv5m with the GSConv module and C3Ghost module and a nearly 25% reduction in network parameters and a 20% reduction in computational consumption are obtained. Besides, the lightweight network has realized better accuracy than YOLOv5m. In conclusion, the method proposed in this paper is effective in real-time fish detection and recognition with practical application prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current low-light image enhancement techniques prioritize increasing image luminance but fail to address issues including loss of intricate distortion of colors and image details. In order to address these issues that has been overlooked by all parties, this paper suggests a multi-module optimization network for enhancing low-light images by integrating deep learning with Retinex theory. First, we create a decomposition network to separate the lighting components and reflections from the low-light image. We incorporated an enhanced global spatial attention (GSA) module into the decomposition network to boost its flexibility and adaptability. This module enhances the extraction of comprehensive information from the image and safeguards against information loss. To increase the illumination component's luminosity, we subsequently constructed an enhancement network. The Multiscale Guidance Block (MSGB) has been integrated into the improvement network, together with multilayer extended convolution to expand the sensing field and enhance the network's capability for feature extraction. Our proposed method out-performs existing ways in both objective measures and personal evaluations, emphasizing the virtues of the procedure outlined in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to solve the surface detection problems of low accuracy, low precision and inability to automate in the production process of late-model display panels, a little sample-based deep learning organic light-emitting diodes detection model SmartMuraDetection is proposed. First, aiming at the detection difficulty of low surface defect contrast, a gradient boundary enhancement algorithm module is designed to automatically identify and enhance defects and background gray difference. Then, the problem of insufficient little sample data sets is solved, Poisson fusion image enhancement module is designed for sample enhancement. Then, a TinyDetection model adapted to small-scale target detection is constructed to improve the detection accuracy of defects in small-scale targets. Finally, SEMUMaxMin quantization module is proposed as a post-processing module for the result images derived from network model reasoning, and accurate defect data is obtained by setting a threshold filter. The number of sample images in the experiment is 334. This study utilizes an organic light-emitting diodes detection model. The detection accuracy of surface defects can be improved by 85% compared with the traditional algorithm. The method in this paper is used for mass production evaluation in the actual display panel production site. The detection accuracy of surface defects reaches 96%, which can meet the mass production level of the detection equipment in this process section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Restricted by a metal-enclosed structure, the internal defects of large transformers are difficult to visually detect. In this paper, a micro-robot is used to visually inspect the interior of a transformer. For the micro-robot to successfully detect the discharge level and insulation degradation trend in the transformer, it is essential to segment the carbon trace accurately and rapidly from the complex background. However, the complex edge features and significant size differences of carbon traces pose a serious challenge for accurate segmentation. To this end, we propose the Hadamard production-Spatial coordinate attention-PixelShuffle UNet (HSP-UNet), an innovative architecture specifically designed for carbon trace segmentation. To address the pixel over-concentration and weak contrast of carbon trace image, the Adaptive Histogram Equalization (AHE) algorithm is used for image enhancement. To realize the effective fusion of carbon trace features with different scales and reduce model complexity, the novel grouped Hadamard Product Attention (HPA) module is designed to replace the original convolution module of the UNet. Meanwhile, to improve the activation intensity and segmentation completeness of carbon traces, the Spatial Coordinate Attention (SCA) mechanism is designed to replace the original jump connection. Furthermore, the PixelShuffle up-sampling module is used to improve the parsing ability of complex boundaries. Compared with UNet, UNet++, UNeXt, MALUNet, and EGE-UNet, HSP-UNet outperformed all the state-of-the-art methods on both carbon trace datasets. For dendritic carbon traces, HSP-UNet improved the Mean Intersection over Union (MIoU), Pixel Accuracy (PA), and Class Pixel Accuracy (CPA) of the benchmark UNet by 2.13, 1.24, and 4.68 percentage points, respectively. For clustered carbon traces, HSP-UNet improved MIoU, PA, and CPA by 0.98, 0.65, and 0.83 percentage points, respectively. At the same time, the validation results showed that the HSP-UNet has a good model lightweighting advantage, with the number of parameters and GFLOPs of 0.061 M and 0.066, respectively. This study could contribute to the accurate segmentation of discharge carbon traces and the assessment of the insulation condition of the oil-immersed transformer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Convolutional Neural Networks ( C N N s ) have achieved remarkable results in the field of infrared image enhancement. However, the research on the visual perception mechanism and the objective evaluation indicators for enhanced infrared images is still not in-depth enough. To make the subjective and objective evaluation more consistent, this paper uses a perceptual metric to evaluate the enhancement effect of infrared images. The perceptual metric mimics the early conversion process of the human visual system and uses the normalized Laplacian pyramid distance ( N L P D ) between the enhanced image and the original scene radiance to evaluate the image enhancement effect. Based on this, this paper designs an infrared image-enhancement algorithm that is more conducive to human visual perception. The algorithm uses a lightweight Fully Convolutional Network ( F C N ), with N L P D as the similarity measure, and trains the network in a self-supervised manner by minimizing the N L P D between the enhanced image and the original scene radiance to achieve infrared image enhancement. The experimental results show that the infrared image enhancement method in this paper outperforms existing methods in terms of visual perception quality, and due to the use of a lightweight network, it is also the fastest enhancement method currently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present paper is to optimize the values of different parameters related to the image denoising algorithm involving Caputo Fabrizio fractional integral operator of non-singular type with the Mittag-Leffler function in generalized form. The algorithm aims to find the coefficients of a kernel to remove the noise from images. The optimization of kernel coefficients are done on the basis of different numerical parameters like Mean Square Error (MSE), Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR), Structure Similarity Index measure (SSIM) and Image Enhancement Factor (IEF). The performance of the proposed algorithm is investigated through above-mentioned numeric parameters and visual perception with the other prevailed algorithms. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed optimized kernel based on generalized fractional operator performs favorably compared to state of the art methods. The uniqueness of the paper is to highlight the optimized values of performance parameters for different values of fractional order. The novelty of the presented work lies in the development of a kernel utilizing coefficients from a fractional integral operator, specifically involving the Mittag-Leffler function in a more generalized form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Underwater image enhancement technology is crucial for the human exploration and exploitation of marine resources. The visibility of underwater images is affected by visible light attenuation. This paper proposes an image reconstruction method based on the decomposition–fusion of multi-channel luminance data to enhance the visibility of underwater images. The proposed method is a single-image approach to cope with the condition that underwater paired images are difficult to obtain. The original image is first divided into its three RGB channels. To reduce artifacts and inconsistencies in the fused images, a multi-resolution fusion process based on the Laplace–Gaussian pyramid guided by a weight map is employed. Image saliency analysis and mask sharpening methods are also introduced to color-correct the fused images. The results indicate that the method presented in this paper effectively enhances the visibility of dark regions in the original image and globally improves its color, contrast, and sharpness compared to current state-of-the-art methods. Our method can enhance underwater images in engineering practice, laying the foundation for in-depth research on underwater images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the quality inspection process of high-voltage cables, several commonly used indicators include cable length, insulation thickness, and the number of conductors within the core. Among these factors, the count of conductors holds particular significance as a key determinant of cable quality. Machine vision technology has found extensive application in automatically detecting the number of conductors in cross-sectional images of high-voltage cables. However, the presence of scratch-type defects in cut high-voltage cable cross-sections can significantly compromise the precision of conductor count detection. To address this problem, this paper introduces a novel improved total variation (TV) algorithm, marking the first-ever application of the TV algorithm in this domain. Considering the staircase effect, the direct use of the TV algorithm is prone to cause serious loss of image edge information. The proposed algorithm firstly introduces multimodal features to effectively mitigate the staircase effect. While eliminating scratch-type defects, the algorithm endeavors to preserve the original image's edge information, consequently yielding a noteworthy enhancement in detection accuracy. Furthermore, a dataset was curated, comprising images of cross-sections of high-voltage cables of varying sizes, each displaying an assortment of scratch-type defects. Experimental findings conclusively demonstrate the algorithm's exceptional efficiency in eradicating diverse scratch-type defects within high-voltage cable cross-sections. The average scratch elimination rate surpasses 90%, with an impressive 96.15% achieved on cable sample 4. A series of conducted ablation experiments in this paper substantiate a significant enhancement in cable image quality. Notably, the Edge Preservation Index (EPI) exhibits an improvement of approximately 20%, resulting in a substantial boost to conductor count detection accuracy, thus effectively enhancing the quality of high-voltage cable production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Degree of Linear Polarization (DoLP) is a key dimension of information in polarization imaging. The quality of polarization images is greatly affected by imaging equipment and environmental factors. Therefore, an enhancement method for the DoLP image is proposed in this paper. First, a super-resolution reconstruction algorithm based on the Detail Enhancement Guided Image Filter is proposed to solve the problem of mosaicization and pseudo-polarization information caused by the degradation of spatial resolution and super-resolution reconstruction of DoFP imaging. Second, for the problem of rapid degradation of polarization image quality caused by hazy environment, a DoLP enhancement algorithm based on multi-channel difference Signal-to-Noise Ratio is proposed to improve the visual effect of polarization images in different scenes with hazy environment. The method proposed in this paper implements super-resolution reconstruction, demosaicing, pseudo-polarization information removal, and adaptive enhancement of DoLP images in DoFP systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to obtain high-quality images, the application of low-illumination image enhancement techniques plays a vital role in enhancing the overall visual appeal. However, it is particularly difficult to enhance an image while maintaining the original information of the scene. The augmentation method based on Retinex theory is widely considered as one of the representative techniques for such problems, but this method still has some limitations. First of all, noise is easily ignored in the process of model building, and the robustness of the model needs to be improved. Secondly, the image decomposition is less effective, so that part of the image information is not effectively presented. Finally, the optimization procedure is computationally complicated. This paper introduces a novel approach for enhancing low-illumination images by utilizing the relative deviation of local gradients. The proposed method aims to address the challenges associated with low-illumination images and offers a solution to these issues. In this paper, local gradient relative deviation is used as a constraint term and a noise term is added to highlight the image texture and structure and improve the robustness of the models, considering that L P achieves piecewise smoothing with better sparsity compared to the sum norm commonly used by L 1 and L 2 norms. In this paper, the L 2 − L P norm is used to constrain the model, which smooths the illumination component and better preserves the details of the reflectance component. In addition, to efficiently solve the optimization problem, the alternating direction multiplier method is chosen to transform the optimization process into the solution of several sub-problems. In comparison to traditional Retinex models, the proposed method excels in its ability to simultaneously enhance the image and suppress noise effectively. The experimental outcomes demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model in enhancing both simulated and real data. This approach can be applied to low-illumination remote sensing images to obtain high-quality remote sensing image data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is difficult to visually detect internal defects in a large transformer with a metal closure. For convenient internal inspection, a micro-robot was adopted, and an inspection method based on an image-enhancement algorithm and an improved deep-learning network was proposed in this paper. Considering the dim environment inside the transformer and the problems of irregular imaging distance and fluctuating supplementary light conditions during image acquisition with the internal-inspection robot, an improved MSRCR algorithm for image enhancement was proposed. It could analyze the local contrast of the image and enhance the details on multiple scales. At the same time, a white-balance algorithm was introduced to enhance the contrast and brightness and solve the problems of overexposure and color distortion. To improve the target recognition performance of complex carbon-trace defects, the SimAM mechanism was incorporated into the Backbone network of the YOLOv8 model to enhance the extraction of carbon-trace features. Meanwhile, the DyHead dynamic detection Head framework was constructed at the output of the YOLOv8 model to improve the perception of local carbon traces with different sizes. To improve the defect target recognition speed of the transformer-inspection robot, a pruning operation was carried out on the YOLOv8 model to remove redundant parameters, realize model lightness, and improve detection efficiency. To verify the effectiveness of the improved algorithm, the detection model was trained and validated with the carbon-trace dataset. The results showed that the MSH-YOLOv8 algorithm achieved an accuracy of 91.80%, which was 3.4 percentage points higher compared to the original YOLOv8 algorithm, and had a significant advantage over other mainstream target-detection algorithms. Meanwhile, the FPS of the proposed algorithm was up to 99.2, indicating that the model computation and model complexity were successfully reduced, which meets the requirements for engineering applications of the transformer internal-inspection robot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The enhancement of images captured under low-light conditions plays a vitally important role in the area of image processing and can significantly affect the performance of following operations. In recent years, deep learning techniques have been leveraged in the area of low-light image enhancement tasks, and deep-learning-based low-light image enhancement methods have been the mainstream for low-light image enhancement tasks. However, due to the inability of existing methods to effectively maintain the color distribution of the original input image and to effectively handle feature descriptions at different scales, the final enhanced image exhibits color distortion and local blurring phenomena. So, in this paper, a novel dual color-and-texture-enhancement-based low-light image enhancement method is proposed, which can effectively enhance low-light images. Firstly, a novel color enhancement block is leveraged to help maintain color distribution during the enhancement process, which can further eliminate the color distortion effect; after that, an attention-based multiscale texture enhancement block is proposed to help the network focus on multiscale local regions and extract more reliable texture representations automatically, and a fusion strategy is leveraged to fuse the multiscale feature representations automatically and finally generate the enhanced reflection component. The experimental results on public datasets and real-world low-light images established the effectiveness of the proposed method on low-light image enhancement tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polarization imaging has achieved a wide range of applications in military and civilian fields such as camouflage detection and autonomous driving. However, when the imaging environment involves a low-light condition, the number of photons is low and the photon transmittance of the conventional Division-of-Focal-Plane (DoFP) structure is small. Therefore, the traditional demosaicing methods are often used to deal with the serious noise and distortion generated by polarization demosaicing in low-light environment. Based on the aforementioned issues, this paper proposes a model called Low-Light Sparse Polarization Demosaicing Network (LLSPD-Net) for simulating a sparse polarization sensor acquisition of polarization images in low-light environments. The model consists of two parts: an intensity image enhancement network and a Stokes vector complementation network. In this work, the intensity image enhancement network is used to enhance low-light images and obtain high-quality RGB images, while the Stokes vector is used to complement the network. We discard the traditional idea of polarization intensity image interpolation and instead design a polarization demosaicing method with Stokes vector complementation. By using the enhanced intensity image as a guide, the completion of the Stokes vector is achieved. In addition, to train our network, we collected a dataset of paired color polarization images that includes both low-light and regular-light conditions. A comparison with state-of-the-art methods on both self-constructed and publicly available datasets reveals that our model outperforms traditional low-light image enhancement demosaicing methods in both qualitative and quantitative experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scanning ion conductance microscopy (SICM) enables the non-invasive three-dimensional imaging of live cells and other structures in physiological environments. However, when imaging complex samples, SICM faces challenges such as having a low temporal resolution during slow scanning and a reduced signal-to-noise ratio during fast scanning, making it difficult to simultaneously improve both temporal and spatial resolution. To address these issues, this paper proposes an algorithm for enhancing image resolution under high-speed scanning. Firstly, scanning images are preprocessed using a median filtering algorithm to remove the salt-and-pepper noise generated during high-speed scanning. Next, the Canny edge detection algorithm is employed to extract the edges of the image targets. To avoid blurring the edges, the new edge-directed interpolation (NEDI) algorithm is then used to fill the edges, while non-edge areas are filled using bilinear interpolation, thereby enhancing the image resolution. Finally, the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and structural similarity index (SSIM) are used to analyze the imaging of articular chondrocytes. The results show that under a scanning speed of 480 nm/ms, the proposed algorithm improves the temporal resolution of imaging by 60% compared to traditional 2× resolution imaging, increases the peak signal-to-noise ratio of the scanning images by 7 dB, and achieves a structural similarity of 0.97. Therefore, the proposed algorithm effectively removes noise during high-speed scanning and improves the SICM scanning imaging resolution, thereby avoiding the reduction in temporal resolution when scanning larger resolution samples and effectively enhancing the performance of SICM scanning imaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing algorithms for enhancing low-light images predominantly focus on the low-light region, which leads to over-enhancement of the glare region, and the high complexity of the algorithm makes it difficult to apply it to embedded devices. In this paper, a GS-AGC algorithm based on regional luminance perception is proposed. The indirect perception of the human eye's luminance vision was taken into account. All similar luminance pixels that satisfied the luminance region were extracted, and adaptive adjustment processing was performed for the different luminance regions of low-light images. The proposed method was evaluated experimentally on real images, and objective evidence was provided to show that its processing effect surpasses that of other comparable methods. Furthermore, the potential practical value of GS-AGC was highlighted through its effective application in road pedestrian detection and face detection. The algorithm in this paper not only effectively suppressed glare but also achieved the effect of overall image quality enhancement. It can be easily combined with the embedded hardware FPGA for acceleration to improve real-time image processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Object detection has a wide range of applications as the most fundamental and challenging task in computer vision. However, the image quality problems such as low brightness, low contrast, and high noise in low-light scenes cause significant degradation of object detection performance. To address this, this paper focuses on object detection algorithms in low-light scenarios, carries out exploration and research from the aspects of low-light image enhancement and object detection, and proposes low-level image enhancement for low-light object detection based on the FPGA MPSoC method. On the one hand, the low-light dataset is expanded and the YOLOv3 object detection model is trained based on the low-order image enhancement technique, which improves the detection performance of the model in low-light scenarios; on the other hand, the model is deployed on the MPSoC board to achieve an edge object detection system, which improves the detection efficiency. Finally, validation experiments are conducted on the publicly available low-light object detection dataset and the ZU3EG-AXU3EGB MPSoC board, and the results show that the method in this paper can effectively improve the detection accuracy and efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photographs taken under harsh ambient lighting can suffer from a number of image quality degradation phenomena due to insufficient exposure. These include reduced brightness, loss of transfer information, noise, and color distortion. In order to solve the above problems, researchers have proposed many deep learning-based methods to improve the illumination of images. However, most existing methods face the problem of difficulty in obtaining paired training data. In this context, a zero-reference image enhancement network for low light conditions is proposed in this paper. First, the improved Encoder-Decoder structure is used to extract image features to generate feature maps and generate the parameter matrix of the enhancement factor from the feature maps. Then, the enhancement curve is constructed using the parameter matrix. The image is iteratively enhanced using the enhancement curve and the enhancement parameters. Second, the unsupervised algorithm needs to design an image non-reference loss function in training. Four non-reference loss functions are introduced to train the parameter estimation network. Experiments on several datasets with only low-light images show that the proposed network has improved performance compared with other methods in NIQE, PIQE, and BRISQUE non-reference evaluation index, and ablation experiments are carried out for key parts, which proves the effectiveness of this method. At the same time, the performance data of the method on PC devices and mobile devices are investigated, and the experimental analysis is given. This proves the feasibility of the method in this paper in practical application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research of application models based on traditional convolutional neural networks has gradually entered the bottleneck period of performance improvement, and the improvement of chest X-ray image models has gradually become a difficult problem in the study. In this paper, the Swin Transformer is introduced into the application model of pneumonia recognition in chest X-ray images, and it is optimized according to the characteristics of chest X-ray images. The experimental results based on the model in this paper are compared with those of the model built with the traditional convolutional neural network as the backbone network, and the accuracy of the model is proved to be greatly improved. After the comparison experiments on two different datasets, the experimental results show that the accuracy of the model in this paper improves from 76.3% to 87.3% and from 92.8% to 97.2%, respectively. The experiments show that the accuracy of image enhancement based on the features of chest X-ray images in this model will be higher than the accuracy without image enhancement. In the experiments of this paper, the identification decision factors in the chest X-ray images were extracted by grad-cam combined with a transformer to find the corresponding approximate lesion regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Image enhancement and reconstruction are the basic processing steps of many real vision systems. Their purpose is to improve the visual quality of images and provide reliable information for subsequent visual decision-making. In this paper, convolution neural network, residual neural network, and generative countermeasure network are studied. A rain fog image enhancement generative countermeasure network model structure including a scalable auxiliary generation network is proposed. The objective loss function is defined, and the periodic consistency loss and periodic perceptual consistency loss analysis are introduced. The core problem of image layering is discussed, and a layering solution framework with a deep expansion structure is proposed. This method realizes multitasking through adaptive feature learning, which has a good theoretical guarantee. This paper can not only bring a pleasant visual experience to viewers but also help to improve the performance of computer vision applications. Through image enhancement technology, the quality of low illumination image can be effectively improved, so that the image has better definition, richer texture details, and lower image noise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tunnel cracks are the main factors that cause damage and collapse of tunnel structures. How to detect tunnel cracks efficiently and avoid safety accidents caused by tunnel cracks effectively is a research hotspot at present. In order to meet the need for efficient detection of tunnel cracks, the tunnel crack detection method based on improved Retinex and deep learning is proposed in this paper. The tunnel crack images collected by optical imaging equipment are used to improve the contrast information of tunnel crack images using the image enhancement algorithm, and this image enhancement algorithm has the function of multi-scale Retinex decomposition with improved central filtering. An improved VGG19 network model is constructed to achieve efficient segmentation of tunnel crack images through deep learning methods and then form the segmented binary image. The Zhang–Suen fast parallel-thinning method is used to obtain the skeleton map of the single-layer pixel, and the length and width information of the tunnel cracks are obtained. The feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method are verified by experiments. Compared with other methods in the literature, the maximum deviation in the length of the tunnel crack is about 5 mm, and the maximum deviation in the width of the tunnel crack is about 0.8 mm. The experimental results show that the proposed method has a shorter detection time and higher detection accuracy. The research results of this paper can provide a strong basis for the health evaluation of tunnels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The low-light image enhancement task aims to improve the visibility of information in the dark to obtain more data and utilize it, while also improving the visual quality of the image. In this paper, we propose a dual cross-attention multi-stage embedding network (DCMENet) for fast and accurate enhancement of low-light images into high-quality images with high visibility. The problem that enhanced images tend to have more noise in them, which affects the image quality, is improved by introducing an attention mechanism in the encoder–decoder structure. In addition, the encoder–decoder can focus most of its attention on the dark areas of the image and better attend to the detailed features in the image that are obscured by the dark areas. In particular, the poor performance of the Transformer when the dataset size is small is solved by fusing the CNN-Attention and Transformer in the encoder. Considering the purpose of the low-light image enhancement task, we raise the importance of recovering image detail information to the same level as reconstructing the lighting. For features such as texture details in images, cascade extraction using spatial attention and pixel attention can reduce the model complexity while the performance is also improved. Finally, the global features obtained by the encoder–decoder are fused into the shallow feature extraction structure to reconstruct the illumination while guiding the network for the focused extraction of information in the dark. The proposed DCMENet achieves the best results in both objective quality assessment and subjective evaluation, while for the computer vision tasks working in low-light environments as well, the enhanced images using the DCMENet proposed in this paper show the best performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Underwater images suffer from low contrast and color distortion. In order to improve the quality of underwater images and reduce storage and computational resources, this paper proposes a lightweight model Rep-UWnet to enhance underwater images. The model consists of a fully connected convolutional network and three densely connected RepConv blocks in series, with the input images connected to the output of each block with a Skip connection. First, the original underwater image is subjected to feature extraction by the SimSPPF module and is processed through feature summation with the original one to be produced as the input image. Then, the first convolutional layer with a kernel size of 3 × 3, generates 64 feature maps, and the multi-scale hybrid convolutional attention module enhances the useful features by reweighting the features of different channels. Second, three RepConv blocks are connected to reduce the number of parameters in extracting features and increase the test speed. Finally, a convolutional layer with 3 kernels generates enhanced underwater images. Our method reduces the number of parameters from 2.7 M to 0.45 M (around 83% reduction) but outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms by extensive experiments. Furthermore, we demonstrate our Rep-UWnet effectively improves high-level vision tasks like edge detection and single image depth estimation. This method not only surpasses the contrast method in objective quality, but also significantly improves the contrast, colorimetry, and clarity of underwater images in subjective quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Featured Application: The research introduced in the paper develops an automatic bird species recognition system powered by feature enhancement and contrast learning, aimed at advancing ecological conservation and biological research. This system bolsters the precision of identifying bird species, aiding in the protection of endangered birds and automating the monitoring of bird populations and their migratory behaviors. It also supports in-depth behavioral and ecological research and evaluates the impact of human activities on avian life. The technology's potential applications are vast, including its use in citizen science initiatives, environmental impact assessments, educational programs, and the tourism sector, where it can provide real-time species identification, thereby enriching eco-tourism experiences and raising biodiversity awareness. Accurate bird species recognition is crucial for ecological conservation, wildlife monitoring, and biological research, yet it poses significant challenges due to the high variability within species and the subtle similarities between different species. This paper introduces an automatic bird species recognition method from images that leverages feature enhancement and contrast learning to address these challenges. Our method incorporates a multi-scale feature fusion module to comprehensively capture information from bird images across diverse scales and perspectives. Additionally, an attention feature enhancement module is integrated to address noise and occlusion within images, thus enhancing the model's robustness. Furthermore, employing a siamese network architecture allows effective learning of common features within instances of the same class and distinctions between different bird species. Evaluated on the CUB200-2011 dataset, our proposed method achieves state-of-the-art performance, surpassing existing methods with an accuracy of 91.3% and F1 score of 90.6%. Moreover, our approach showcases a notable advantage in scenarios with limited training data. When utilizing only 5% of the training data, our model still achieves a recognition accuracy of 65.2%, which is significantly higher than existing methods under similar data constraints. Notably, our model exhibits faster execution times compared to existing methods, rendering it suitable for real-time applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical image processing has become a critical research area due to the vast amounts of digital image data available. However, medical images often suffer from poor illumination and low visibility of significant structures, requiring image enhancement to improve image quality before processing. In this paper, we propose a technique for enhancing medical images by removing noise and improving contrast based on three different enhancing transforms. The proposed technique embeds the image into a neutrosophic fuzzy domain, where it is mapped into three different levels of trueness, falseness, and indeterminacy, and each level is processed individually using the enhancement transforms. We compare the proposed technique with four other systems for leukemia detection and classification using accuracy and T, I, and F values. The proposed system performs the best with an accuracy of 98%, outperforming the other systems in terms of accuracy, degree of indeterminacy, and falsity. The proposed system uses different algorithms and filters to process images and extract features like color and texture. The system's classification uses k-means for segmentation and SVM for classification. The paper highlights the importance of considering T, I, and F values in evaluating the performance of different systems for leukemia detection and classification, providing a more accurate representation of the uncertainty and ambiguity involved in the evaluation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an improved swarming algorithm that enhances low-illumination images. The algorithm combines a hybrid Harris Eagle algorithm with double gamma (IHHO-BIGA) and incomplete beta (IHHO-NBeta) functions. This paper integrates the concept of symmetry into the improvement steps of the image adaptive enhancement algorithm. The enhanced algorithm integrates chaotic mapping for population initialization, a nonlinear formula for prey energy calculation, spiral motion from the black widow algorithm for global search enhancement, a nonlinear inertia weight factor inspired by particle swarm optimization, and a modified Levy flight strategy to prevent premature convergence to local optima. This paper compares the algorithm's performance with other swarm intelligence algorithms using commonly used test functions. The algorithm's performance is compared against several emerging swarm intelligence algorithms using commonly used test functions, with results demonstrating its superior performance. The improved Harris Eagle algorithm is then applied for image adaptive enhancement, and its effectiveness is evaluated on five low-illumination images from the LOL dataset. The proposed method is compared to three common image enhancement techniques and the IHHO-BIGA and IHHO-NBeta methods. The experimental results reveal that the proposed approach achieves optimal visual perception and enhanced image evaluation metrics, outperforming the existing techniques. Notably, the standard deviation data of the first image show that the IHHO-NBeta method enhances the image by 8.26%, 120.91%, 126.85%, and 164.02% compared with IHHO-BIGA, the single-scale Retinex enhancement method, the homomorphic filtering method, and the limited contrast adaptive histogram equalization method, respectively. The processing time of the improved method is also better than the previous heuristic algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Underwater images suffer from severe color attenuation and contrast reduction due to the poor and complex lighting conditions in the water. Most mainstream methods employing deep learning typically require extensive underwater paired training data, resulting in complex network structures, long training time, and high computational cost. To address this issue, a novel ZeroReference Parameter Estimation Network (Zero-UAE) model is proposed in this paper for the adaptive enhancement of underwater images. Based on the principle of light attenuation curves, an underwater adaptive curve model is designed to eliminate uneven underwater illumination and color bias. A lightweight parameter estimation network is designed to estimate dynamic parameters of underwater adaptive curve models. A tailored set of non-reference loss functions are developed for underwater scenarios to fine-tune underwater images, enhancing the network's generalization capabilities. These functions implicitly control the learning preferences of the network and effectively solve the problems of color bias and uneven illumination in underwater images without additional datasets. The proposed method examined on three widely used real-world underwater image enhancement datasets. Experimental results demonstrate that our method performs adaptive enhancement on underwater images. Meanwhile, the proposed method yields competitive performance compared with state-of-the-art other methods. Moreover, the Zero-UAE model requires only 17K parameters, minimizing the hardware requirements for underwater detection tasks. What'more, the adaptive enhancement capability of the Zero-UAE model offers a new solution for processing images under extreme underwater conditions, thus contributing to the advancement of underwater autonomous monitoring and ocean exploration technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nighttime semantic segmentation due to issues such as low contrast, fuzzy imaging, and low-quality annotation results in significant degradation of masks. In this paper, we introduce a domain adaptive approach for nighttime semantic segmentation that overcomes the reliance on low-light image annotations to transfer the source domain model to the target domain. On the front end, a low-light image enhancement sub-network combining lightweight deep learning with mapping curve iteration is adopted to enhance nighttime foreground contrast. In the segmentation network, the body generation and edge preservation branches are implemented to generate consistent representations within the same semantic region. Additionally, a pixel weighting strategy is embedded to increase the prediction accuracy for small targets. During the training, a discriminator is implemented to distinguish features between the source and target domains, thereby guiding the segmentation network for adversarial transfer learning. The proposed approach's effectiveness is verified through testing on Dark Zurich, Nighttime Driving, and CityScapes, including evaluations of mIoU, PSNR, and SSIM. They confirm that our approach surpasses existing baselines in segmentation scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Image intensifier tubes (IITs) are the most important modules of night vision devices used in huge numbers by military forces worldwide. Resolution is the most important parameter of IITs that presents information about ability of these devices to produce output images preserving information about details of the observed scenery. Despite its importance, it is still a common practice to measure resolution subjectively, by an observer looking at image of a resolution target created by a tested IIT. A series of attempts have been carried out to develop objective methods for accurate resolution measurement of IITs but with limited success. Accuracy of these methods varies depending on the tested IIT. This paper presents detailed analysis of proposed methods for objective resolution measurement. This analysis has shown that significant variability of accuracy of these methods is caused by one main drawback: the methods do not take into account influence of the spatial noise effect on human perception of image of the resolution target. Thus, an improved method taking into account spatial noise and its impact on target detection has been proposed. The method has been validated through experimental verification that shows accuracy improvements compared to other objective methods. This new approach improves accuracy of measurement of resolution of IITs to a level that can be accepted at professional test stations. In this way, this new method has potential to replace the standard subjective method to measure resolution of IITs and fix the biggest flaw of the standard test stations: measurement subjectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The images captured by forest nighttime imaging devices are prone to degradation and noise issues due to environmental constraints. This paper proposes a novel framework based on the self‐calibrating illumination framework to improve image quality. The framework consists of four specific steps: (1) addressing non‐uniform degradation by estimating illuminance components through non‐uniform MaxRGB, (2) extracting rich information using multi‐scale inflationary convolution, (3) analyzing the relationship between different input levels and the initial level and progressively adjusting the luminance components using a channel self‐calibration module to achieve continuous improvement in luminance, and (4) designing a reflectance optimization module that enhances illuminance while suppressing noise through a regularization model. To evaluate the proposed method, a dataset comprising 1000 forest night images is constructed using an image simulation strategy. The effectiveness of this method was validated on both synthetic and real datasets, demonstrating its ability to significantly enhance nighttime forest images. When compared to six other algorithms, this method outperformed them in eight evaluation metrics, including a peak signal‐to‐noise ratio metric of 22.839 and a structural similarity metric of 0.909. The experimental results clearly indicate that this method excels in enhancing image quality and fidelity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper realizes infrared image denoising, recognition, and semantic segmentation for complex electrical equipment and proposes a thermal fault diagnosis method that incorporates temperature differences. We introduce a deformable convolution module into the Denoising Convolutional Neural Network (DeDn-CNN) and propose an image denoising algorithm based on this improved network. By replacing Gaussian wrap-around filtering with anisotropic diffusion filtering, we suggest an image enhancement algorithm that employs Weighted Guided Filtering (WGF) with an enhanced Single-Scale Retinex (Ani-SSR) technique to prevent strong edge halos. Furthermore, we propose a refined detection algorithm for electrical equipment that builds upon an improved RetinaNet. This algorithm incorporates a rotating rectangular frame and an attention module, addressing the challenge of precise detection in scenarios where electrical equipment is densely arranged or tilted. We also introduce a thermal fault diagnosis approach that combines temperature differences with DeeplabV3 + semantic segmentation. The improved RetinaNet's recognition results are fed into the DeeplabV3 + model to further segment structures prone to thermal faults. The accuracy of component recognition in this paper achieved 87.23%, 86.54%, and 90.91%, with respective false alarm rates of 7.50%, 8.20%, and 7.89%. We propose a comprehensive method spanning from preprocessing through target recognition to thermal fault diagnosis for infrared images of complex electrical equipment, providing practical insights and robust solutions for future automation of electrical equipment inspections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Underwater object detection is crucial in marine exploration, presenting a challenging problem in computer vision due to factors like light attenuation, scattering, and background interference. Existing underwater object detection models face challenges such as low robustness, extensive computation of model parameters, and a high false detection rate. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a lightweight underwater object detection method integrating deep learning and image enhancement. Firstly, FUnIE-GAN is employed to perform data enhancement to restore the authentic colors of underwater images, and subsequently, the restored images are fed into an enhanced object detection network named YOLOv7-GN proposed in this paper. Secondly, a lightweight higher-order attention layer aggregation network (ACC3-ELAN) is designed to improve the fusion perception of higher-order features in the backbone network. Moreover, the head network is enhanced by leveraging the interaction of multi-scale higher-order information, additionally fusing higher-order semantic information from features at different scales. To further streamline the entire network, we also introduce the AC-ELAN-t module, which is derived from pruning based on ACC3-ELAN. Finally, the algorithm undergoes practical testing on a biomimetic sea flatworm underwater robot. The experimental results on the DUO dataset show that our proposed method improves the performance of object detection in underwater environments. It provides a valuable reference for realizing object detection in underwater embedded devices with great practical potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facial privacy is essential in our time due to the violations that occur due to the proliferation of social media and people's primary dependence on it. Facial features can be exploited to identify, track, or other matters without obtaining prior consent. This is increasingly important due to the increasing use of facial recognition technologies. Protecting the face and privacy is a challenging task, as the entire world is very widely connected through social networking sites in an uncensored manner, especially in countries with no electronic governance or oversight. Therefore, there is an urgent need to provide systems or research that focuses on the issue of facial privacy. In this paper, a system for providing privacy for people was proposed using the WIDER FACE data set, considered the most important among the data sets. The system aims to provide privacy for people by determining the destination that must be preserved and provided with privacy through three technical. The approach goes through several steps: The processing process of the image is achieved by enhancement of the images that are input in the training stage and then dividing the data into a test and training set, and the training stage through the YOLOv6 algorithm (looks only once), and privacy operations including encryption, decryption, mask and blurring in the test part of the data, and conducting an external test for personal photo. The final results of the proposed system were as follows: accuracy = 0.98 in training and 0.96 in testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at the poor effect of traditional denoising algorithms on image enhancement with strong noise, an image denoising algorithm based on improved whale optimization algorithm and parameter adaptive array stochastic resonance is proposed in the paper. In this algorithm, through dimensionality reduction scanning, coding, modulation and other processing, the noise-containing gray image becomes a one-dimensional aperiodic binary pulse amplitude modulation signal suitable for a bistable stochastic resonance model. Then, the traditional whale optimization algorithm is improved in the initial solution distribution, global search ability and population diversity generalization. The improved whale optimization algorithm is applied to select the parameters of the stochastic resonance, which effectively improves the parameters self-adaptive of the array stochastic resonance model. Finally, the denoised image is obtained by demodulating, decoding and anti-scanning the stochastic resonance output. The experimental results show that compared with the array stochastic resonance method with fixed parameters and the classical image denoising method, the algorithm proposed in this paper has better performance in terms of visual effect and peak signal-to-noise ratio index, which proves the advantages and effective application of the method in image denoising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Face shape priors such as landmarks, heatmaps, and parsing maps are widely used to improve face super resolution (SR). It is observed that face priors provide locations of high‐frequency details in key facial areas such as the eyes and mouth. However, existing methods fail to effectively exploit the high‐frequency information by using the priors as either constraints or inputs. This paper proposes a novel high frequency highway (H2F${\rm H}_2{\rm F}$) framework to better utilize prior information for face SR, which dynamically decomposes the final SR face into a coarse SR face and a high frequency (HF) face. The coarse SR face is reconstructed from a low‐resolution face via a texture branch, using only pixel‐wise reconstruction loss. Meanwhile, the HF face is directly generated from face priors via an HF branch that employs the proposed inception–hourglass model. As a result, H2F${\rm H}_2{\rm F}$ allows the face priors to have a direct impact on the SR face by adding the outputs of both branches as the final result and provides an extra face editing function. Extensive experiments show that H2F${\rm H}_2{\rm F}$ significantly outperforms state‐of‐the‐art face SR methods, is general for different texture branch models and face priors, and is robust to dataset mismatch and pose variations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]