A statistical derivation of an automatic tone mapping algorithm for wide dynamic range display

In this paper, we present a modified tone mapping algorithm for displaying wide dynamic range images with good brightness. Our algorithm embeds an automatic computation of the key parameter controlling the brightness of tone mapped images, which make use of statistical analysis of WDR images. This enables to prevent unnecessary or cumbersome manual tuning of parameters as often found in tone mapping algorithms. Experimental results performed on different WDR images show that we are able to get images which are visually pleasant and which have good brightness and contrast. The good performance of our algorithm is also confirmed numerically through the use of the tone mapping quality index (TMQI), an objective image quality measure.