HDRkuvien

HDRkuvien is a hypothetical imaging concept that describes a method for capturing and rendering high dynamic range content by combining multi-exposure imaging with a per-pixel encoding scheme called kuvien. In this framework, a scene is captured using a sequence of exposures to cover the full luminance range, and the data are compressed into a per-pixel kuvien structure that jointly encodes luminance and chrominance information in a compact representation. The goal is to enable efficient storage and fast, artifact-minimized reconstruction on displays capable of wide color gamut and high brightness.

The kuvien encoding is designed to support hierarchical decoding, where lower-resolution representations provide quick previews and higher-resolution layers refine detail. Reconstruction involves a decoder that expands the kuvien to an HDR image, followed by tone mapping or direct rendering on HDR displays. Techniques proposed for HDRkuvien emphasize motion-aware fusion, local contrast preservation, and reduced banding through perceptual quantization.

Status and adoption: HDRkuvien is not an established standard or widely implemented technology. It appears in theoretical discussions and a small set of academic demonstrations as a concept to explore data-efficient HDR representations rather than a production-ready pipeline.

Applications: In research contexts for imaging theory, as a teaching example for HDR data representations, and as a long-term concept for future cameras and displays that seek efficient HDR pipelines.

See also: High dynamic range imaging, tone mapping, multi-exposure photography, image encoding.