High-Dynamic-Range Image Generation and Coding for Multi-exposure Multi-view Images

High-dynamic-range (HDR) images offer better visual quality that is much closer to reality by allowing a wider range of luminance. Because of the rarity of devices that directly capture/display scenes in HDR format, HDR images are usually generated using several low-dynamic-range (LDR) images with various exposure settings and then displayed on the conventional display, after tone mapping. This paper proposes HDR generation for multi-view images considering the need to provide the user with an expanded visual experience, not only in terms of a wider field of view (FOV), but also with a greater dynamic range. This novel technique generates HDR multi-view images in an efficient way, and only NLDR images are needed to render HDR images in N views. Furthermore, to efficiently transmit the multi-view image with various exposure, two coding architectures are proposed. The experimental results show that the proposed schemes are capable of achieving 39.5 % bitrate savings and give a rendered HDR image with greatly improved quality, compared to a conventional multi-view coding scheme.