Simple effective image and video color correction using quaternion distance metric

Color correction or stabilization methods for image and video are important in signal processing areas. We can obtain image and video with better quality and more pleasing appearance by applying these correction methods. Besides, color corrected image and video also can be used to enhance performance of many post-processing techniques, such as pattern recognition, object tracking, human face matching, etc. In this paper, we have proposed a color correction algorithm based on quaternion algebra for color image and video. First, our method uses quaternion color distance metric to compute the pixel-based color differences between target image (or video frame) and reference image/video frame with similar appearance but slightly different illumination condition. After the color differences of image pixels are obtained, we use these pixels to calculate a correction matrix and use this matrix to correct target image and video frame. Our method can be applied to image and video with fast processing speed and has good performance when compared it with state-of-the-art method in the literature. The algorithm is also simple, effective, and easy to be implemented.