DSFormer: Leveraging Transformer with Cross-Modal Attention for Temporal Consistency in Low-Light Video Enhancement

Recent advancements in deep learning have significantly impacted low-light video enhancement, sparking great interest in the field. However, while these techniques have proven effective for enhancing individual static images, they struggle with temporal instability when applied to videos, leading to artifacts and flickering. This challenge is further compounded by the difficulty of obtaining dynamic low-light/high-light video pairs in real-world scenarios. Our proposed solution tackles these issues by integrating a cross-attention mechanism with optical flow. This approach helps mitigate temporal inconsistencies, often found when training with static images, by using optical flow to infer motion in individual frames. We have also developed a Transformer model (DSFormer) that leverages spatial and channel features to enhance visual quality and temporal stability in videos. Additionally, we have created a novel dual path feed-forward network (DPFN) that improves our method’s ability to capture and maintain local contextual information, which is crucial for low-light enhancement. Through extensive comparative and ablation studies, we demonstrate that our approach delivers high luminance and temporal consistency in enhancement sequences.