High-dynamic range image generation from single low-dynamic range image

Due to the growing popularity of high-dynamic range (HDR) image and the high complexity to capture HDR image, researchers focus on converting low-dynamic range (LDR) content to HDR, which gives rise to a number of dynamic range expansion methods. Most of the existing methods try their best to tackle highlight areas during the expanding, however, in some cases, they cannot achieve approving results. In this study, a novel LDR image expansion technique is presented. The technique first detects the highlight areas in image; then preprocesses them and reconstructs the information of these regions; finally, expands the LDR image to HDR. Unlike the existing schemes, the proposed approach escapes the complicated treatment to highlight areas in the process of expansion, which makes the expansion straightforward; at the same time, it facilitates the expansion scheme and minimises the formation of the artefacts. The experimental results show that the proposed method performs well; the tone mapped versions of the produced HDR images are popular. The results of the image quality metric also illustrate that the novel approach can recover more image details with minimised contrast loss and reversal, compared with the existing schemes considered in the comparison.