This question appears to relate to increasing the Dynamic Range of an image by integrating information from multiple 8 bit exposures into a 16 bit image. This is related to the practice of capturing and combining "image stacks" in astronomical imaging among other fields. An explanation of this practice and how it can both reduce image noise, and enhance dynamic range is available here:
http://keithwiley.com/astroPhotography/imageStacking.shtml
The idea is that successive captures of the same scene are subject to image noise, and this noise leads to stochastic variation of the pixel values captured. In the simplest case these variations can be leveraged by summing and dividing i.e. mean averaging the stack to improve its dynamic range but the practicality would depend very much on the noise characteristics of the camera.