RLUNet: Overexposure-Content-Recovery-Based Single HDR Image Reconstruction with the Imaging Pipeline Principle

With the popularity of High Dynamic Range (HDR) display technology, consumer demand for HDR images is increasing. Since HDR cameras are expensive, reconstructing High Dynamic Range (HDR) images from traditional Low Dynamic Range (LDR) images is crucial. However, existing HDR image reconstruction algorithms often fail to recover fine details and do not adequately address the fundamental principles of the LDR imaging pipeline. To overcome these limitations, the Reversing Lossy UNet (RLUNet) has been proposed, aiming to effectively balance dynamic range expansion and recover overexposed areas through a deeper understanding of LDR image pipeline principles. The RLUNet model comprises the Reverse Lossy Network, which is designed according to the LDR–HDR framework and focuses on reconstructing HDR images by recovering overexposed regions, dequantizing, linearizing the mapping, and suppressing compression artifacts. This framework, grounded in the principles of the LDR imaging pipeline, is designed to reverse the operations involved in lossy image operations. Furthermore, the integration of the Texture Filling Module (TFM) block with the Recovery of Overexposed Regions (ROR) module in the RLUNet model enhances the visual performance and detail texture of the overexposed areas in the reconstructed HDR image. The experiments demonstrate that the proposed RLUNet model outperforms various state-of-the-art methods on different testsets.