Color Constancy for Multiple Light Sources A. Gijsenij, R. Lu, T. Gevers In IEEE Transactions on Image Processing 2012. [bibtex] [pdf] [url]

Color constancy algorithms are generally based on the simplifying assumption that the spectral distribution of the light source is uniform across the scene. However, in reality, this assumption is often violated due to the presence of multiple light sources. In this paper, we will address more realistic scenarios where the uniform light source assumption is too restrictive. First, a methodology is proposed to extend existing algorithms by applying color constancy locally to image patches rather than globally to the entire image. After local (patch-based) illuminant estimation, these estimates are combined into more robust estimations and a local correction is applied based on a modified diagonal model. Quantitative and qualitative experiments on spectral and real images show that the proposed methodology reduces the influence of two light sources present in one scene simultaneously. If the chromatic difference between these two illuminants is more than 1 degree, the proposed framework outperforms algorithms based on the uniform light source assumption (with error-reduction up to approximately 30%). Otherwise, when the chromatic difference is less than 1degree and the scene can be considered to contain one (approximately) uniform light source, the performance of the proposed method framework is similar to global color constancy methods.

@Article{GijsenijTIP2012,
  author       = "Gijsenij, A. and Lu, R. and Gevers, T.",
  title        = "Color Constancy for Multiple Light Sources",
  journal      = "IEEE Transactions on Image Processing",
  number       = "2",
  volume       = "21",
  pages        = "697--707",
  year         = "2012",
  url          = "https://ivi.fnwi.uva.nl/isis/publications/2012/GijsenijTIP2012",
  pdf          = "https://ivi.fnwi.uva.nl/isis/publications/2012/GijsenijTIP2012/GijsenijTIP2012.pdf",
  has_image    = 1
}