A fast color constancy scheme for automobile video cameras

Color constancy (CC) is an important requirement for all digital imaging and many computer vision systems. Video photography applications such as automobile video cameras required to have the CC schemes that exhibit quick and accurate response to rapidly changing scene illuminant. This paper presents a fast and effective CC scheme specifically suited for automobile video cameras. The proposed CC scheme uses combination of a static method for illuminant estimation called White Patch Retinex (WPR) and a computationally efficient linear transformation model for WB correction of the images. The scheme also introduces novel temporal filtering of the WB parameters to avoid the field flicker noise. Exhaustive testing of the scheme in laboratory and real life test conditions have shown the it to be effective under various lighting conditions. The paper also presents details of its implementation on an embedded processing platform to achieve HD video processing at the frame rate of 60 frames per second.