<p>Incremental evaluation of the proposed method starts with Step 1 (depth compensation), Step 2 (log-based histogram equalization), and Step 5.</p>

Steps 3–5 cannot be computed separately, as Step 3 performs decomposition, Step 4 provides recombination weights, and Step 5 reconstructs the image. The baseline Mertens’ algorithm corresponds to Steps 3 and 5 combined.