Atmospheric Scattering Model and Non-Uniform Illumination Compensation for Low-Light Remote Sensing Image Enhancement

Enhancing low-light remote sensing images is crucial for preserving the accuracy and reliability of downstream analyses in a wide range of applications. Although numerous enhancement algorithms have been developed, many fail to effectively address the challenges posed by non-uniform illumination in low-light scenes. These images often exhibit significant brightness inconsistencies, leading to two primary problems: insufficient enhancement in darker regions and over-enhancement in brighter areas, frequently accompanied by color distortion and visual artifacts. These issues largely stem from the limitations of existing methods, which insufficiently account for non-uniform atmospheric attenuation and local brightness variations in reflectance estimation. To overcome these challenges, we propose a robust enhancement method based on non-uniform illumination compensation and the Atmospheric Scattering Model (ASM). Unlike conventional approaches, our method utilizes ASM to initialize reflectance estimation by adaptively adjusting atmospheric light and transmittance. A weighted graph is then employed to effectively handle local brightness variation. Additionally, a regularization term is introduced to suppress noise, refine reflectance estimation, and maintain balanced brightness enhancement. Extensive experiments on multiple benchmark remote sensing datasets demonstrate that our approach outperforms state-of-the-art methods, delivering superior enhancement performance and visual quality, even under complex non-uniform low-light conditions.