Investigations into Multi-Scale Retinex

The main thrust of this paper is to investigate the multi-scale retinex (MSR) approach to image enhancement to explain the effect of the processing from a theoretical standpoint. This leads to a new algorithm with fewer arbitrary parameters that is more flexible, maintains colour fidelity, and still preserves the contrast-enhancement benefits of the original MSR method. To accomplish this we identify the explicit and implicit processing goals of MSR. By decoupling the MSR operations from one another, we build an algorithm composed of independent steps that separates out the issues of gamma adjustment, colour balance, dynamic range compression, and colour enhancement, which are all jumbled together in the original MSR method. We then extend MSR with colour constancy and chromaticity-preserving contrast enhancement.