journal article·2025-05-15Open access

Semantic-Aware Low-Light Image Enhancement by Learning from Multiple Color Spaces

Bo Jiang, Xuefei Wang, Naidi Yang, Yuhan Liu, Xi Chen, Qiwen Wu

Applied Sciences· Volume 15· Issue 10

Abstract

Extreme low-light image enhancement presents persistent challenges due to compounded degradations involving underexposure, sensor noise, and structural detail loss. Traditional low-light image enhancement methods predominantly employ global adjustment strategies that disregard semantic context, often resulting in incomplete detail recovery or color distortion. To address these limitations, we propose a semantic-aware knowledge-guided framework (SKF) that systematically integrates semantic priors for improved illumination recovery. Our framework introduces three key modules: A Semantic Feature Enhancement Module for integrating hierarchical semantic features, a Semantic-Guided Color Histogram Loss to enforce color consistency, and a Semantic-Guided Adversarial Loss to enhance perceptual realism. Furthermore, we improve the semantic-guided color histogram loss by leveraging multi-color space constraints. Inspired by human visual perception mechanisms, our enhanced loss function calculates color discrepancies across three color spaces—RGB, LAB, and LCH—through three components: lossrgb, losslab and losslch. These components collaboratively optimize image contrast and saturation, thereby simultaneously enhancing contrast preservation and chromatic naturalness.
Source: crossref · Quality: baseline

Research context

OpenAlex topics: Image Enhancement Techniques · Advanced Image Fusion Techniques · Advanced Image Processing Techniques

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

Affiliations

School of Educational Science and Technology, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing 210049, China

Key Laboratory of Flexible Electronics (KLOFE), School of Flexible Electronics (Future Technologies), Nanjing Tech University (NanjingTech), Nanjing 211816, China

Institute of Advanced Materials (IAM), Nanjing Tech University (NanjingTech), Nanjing 211816, China

Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China

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