Figure 1: High dynamic range image (HDRI) recovered from a single, coded, 8-bit low dynamic range (LDR) image using the proposed sparse reconstruction method. Left: HDR image recovered with our framework, tonemapped for display purposes. The inset shows a cropped region of the coded LDR image used as input to the reconstruction algorithm. Center left: Close-up of two exposures of the reconstructed HDR image showing the ability of our method to reconstruct an extended dynamic range. Center right: normalized luminance plots of the marked scanline (yellow line, rotated by 90• ) for the reconstructed image (green curve) and the ground truth image (blue curve). Right: false color image of the reconstructed HDR scene (scale is in stops), showing the extremely large dynamic range that the original scene had and our technique is able recover.
AbstractCurrent HDR acquisition techniques are based on either (i) fusing multibracketed, low dynamic range (LDR) images, (ii) modifying existing hardware and capturing different exposures simultaneously with multiple sensors, or (iii) reconstructing a single image with spatially-varying pixel exposures. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm to recover high-quality HDRI images from a single, coded exposure. The proposed reconstruction method builds on recently-introduced ideas of convolutional sparse coding (CSC); this paper demonstrates how to make CSC practical for HDR imaging. We demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves higher-quality reconstructions than alternative methods, we evaluate optical coding schemes, analyze algorithmic parameters, and build a prototype coded HDR camera that demonstrates the utility of convolutional sparse HDRI coding with a custom hardware platform.