A Database with Reference for Image Dehazing Evaluation

Abstract

In this article, the authors introduce a new color image database, CHIC (Color Hazy Images for Comparison), devoted to haze model assessment and dehazing method evaluation. For three real scenes, they provide two illumination conditions and several densities of real fog. The main interest lies in the availability of several metadata parameters such as the distance from the camera to the objects in the scene, the image radiance and the fog density through fog transmittance. For each scene, the fog-free (ground-truth) image is also available, which allows an objective comparison of the resulting image enhancement and potential shortcomings of the model. Five different dehazing methods are benchmarked on three intermediate levels of fog using existing image quality assessment (IQA) metrics with reference to the provided fog-free image. This provides a basis for the evaluation of dehazing methods across fog densities as well as the effectiveness of existing dehazing dedicated IQA metrics. The results indicate that more attention should be given to dehazing methods and the evaluation of metrics to meet an optimal level of image quality. This database and its description are freely available at the web address http.;thic.ii-bourgogne.fr. (C) 2018 Society for Imaging Science and Technology