Evaluation of HDR tone‐mapping algorithms using a high‐dynamic‐range display to emulate real scenes

Abstract

Current HDR display technology approaches the dynamic-range capabilities of the fully adapted human visual system. As such, this technology has potential for performing as a surrogate for real-world scenes in the perceptual evaluation of high-dynamic-range (HDR) image-reproduction algorithms that aim to map HDR scenes to the limited dynamic ranges available in typical display and print technology. Compared with direct image assessment in comparison with real-world scenes, it is clear that use of HDR display technology has the benefit of simplicity in experimental design while maintaining the HDR of the original scene. To evaluate this potential application of HDR display technology, seven published versions of well-known HDR tone-mapping algorithms were benchmarked for perceptual rendering accuracy against each of four real-world scenes constructed in the laboratory and against corresponding images on an HDR display. The results illustrate that visual assessments obtained from the HDR display and those obtained from real-world scenes are in good agreement, validating the potential for HDR display technology as an evaluation tool in this context.

The high dynamic range imaging pipeline : Tone-mapping, distribution, and single-exposure reconstruction

“…A third strategy is to compare the tone-mapped image to a reference displayed on an HDR monitor [140,146,181]. Although the HDR display also has restrictions as compared to the real-world scene, it provides a more well-controlled reference.…”

Quality Assessment in Computer Graphics

“…However, the approach has the advantage that the experiments can be run in a wellcontrolled environment and, given the reference, the task is easier. Because of the limited availability of HDR displays, only a few studies employed this method: [47,38].…”

“…However, because their accuracy still needs to be validated, they are not commonly recognized method for comparing tone-mapping operators. Instead, the operators have been compared in a large number of subjective studies evaluating both tone mapping for static images [22,39,47,21,107,4,108,1,2,92,38,93,36] and tone mapping for video [69,24,10]. None of these studies provided a definite ranking of the operators since such a ranking strongly depends on the scene content and the parameters passed to a tone-mapping operator.…”

Comparative Analysis between LDR and HDR Images for Automatic Fruit Recognition and Counting

“…One of the ways to bypass this problem is through HDR (High Dynamic Range) images [17]. The appearance of alternative techniques, like HDR, was motivated by trying to mimic the human visual which has the ability to globally adapt to luminance of 12 orders of magnitude (locally to about 4/5 orders of magnitude) [18]. The presently existing imaging devices have a limited dynamic range, typically 2 or 3 orders of magnitude, thus being Low Dynamic Range (LDR) devices [17,19].…”

“…In this sense, HDR images are capable of capturing the luminance of real scenes from extremely dark areas, with 10 −6 cd/m 2 , to very bright areas, with 10 8 cd/m 2 [22]. This is, nevertheless, a relatively recent area, with around a decade of existence [18,23].…”