Abstract: Due to the small temperature difference between target and background in the scene, infrared image usually has a low contrast and poor visual effect. In order to solve this problem, a novel enhancement method for low-contrast infrared image is proposed based on nonlinear correction of singular values in real time. Firstly, the infrared image is processed by means of singular value decomposition to obtain the original singular values. Then, logarithmically nonlinear transformation is adopted to optimize singular values. Finally, the enhanced infrared image is reconstructed with new singular values corrected. Using logarithmically nonlinear transform can stretch the dynamic range of singular values, and optimize gradient of singular values with the result that the energy information of infrared image can be expressed fully and that the quality of infrared image can be improved effectively. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms other methods in terms of visual effect and objective evaluation and also reflects a good real-time performance, which provides a new approach for the realization of real-time infrared image enhancement.