Illuminating the Darkness: A Comprehensive Survey and Future Directions in Low-Light Image Enhancement

Low-light image enhancement (LLIE) is a crucial research domain with broad applications. This paper comprehensively surveys LLIE techniques, categorizing them into traditional, deep learning-based, and synergistic hybrid methods. This survey analyzes more than 35 influential papers, summarizing methodologies, advantages, and limitations. We present experimental evaluations using benchmark datasets, discuss state-of-the-art benchmarks and evaluation metrics, and propose future research directions informed by experimental validations and identified challenges. This review aims to guide researchers and practitioners, promoting innovation in LLIE and related applications, emphasizing robust, generalizable, efficient, and ethical real-world solutions.