Illumination-based nighttime video contrast enhancement using genetic algorithm

Contrast enhancement is crucial to the domain of security and surveillance where limitations in dynamic range and lack of lighting sources prevent fine details of the scene from being captured. Here, we propose a method of nighttime video contrast enhancement based on genetic algorithms. Conversion from RGB to HSI and illumination component extraction were done firstly. Illumination-based enhancement which combines chromosome, corresponding operators and genetic algorithm was then applied to enhance the contrast and details of the video according to an objective fitness criterion. Image reconstruction followed previous procedures finally. Comparison of our proposed method with other automatic enhancement techniques such as histogram equalization shows that our method produces natural looking images/videos, especially when the dynamic range of the input image is high. Results obtained, both in terms of subjective and objective evaluation, show the superiority of the proposed method.