Efficient Saliency Map Detection for Low-Light Images Based on Image Gradient

Recently, deep learning has been widely employed across various domains. The Convolution Neural Network (CNN), a popular deep learning algorithm, has been successfully utilized in object recognition tasks, such as face recognition, vehicle recognition, and license plate recognition. However, conventional methods for object recognition may not be appropriate for low-light image recognition due to information loss in the dark regions and unexpected noise that can impair object quality. Therefore, the development of specialized techniques for low-light image enhancement has become a major research focus for object detection. This paper proposed a gradient-based saliency map detection method with an improved ResNet architecture that outperforms previous works in detecting multiple or large objects. Additionally, the proposed method enhances images with the object as the center and emphasizes foreground-background differences. Compared with previous works, this paper achieves 1.28× improvements in the parameters and 1.32× faster inference speed than the original ResNet architecture.