Global image registration and video color correction in presence of illumination variations

In high-speed video imaging acquisition, artificial lighting can cause non-uniform luminosity and chroma variation between frames, which is linked to the interaction between the frequency of the lighting power source and of the video acquisition. This problem is commonly dubbed “flicker”. Deflickering techniques are also useful for resolving similar problems encountered in other applications for instance in archived film sequences, image-video compression and time-lapse videos. In this context, this paper introduces a rigid registration method using point descriptors that is robust to illumination variations, and followed by a method for stabilizing brightness variations in image sequences. This method is based on a Least Square adjustment approach. Our results demonstrate the efficacy of our method at correcting global brightness fluctuations in image sequences while maintaining image quality and without introducing artifacts.