A modular architecture for high resolution image dehazing

Abstract

Haze is an atmospheric phenomenon which diminishes visibility in outdoor images. Algorithms based on dark channel prior (DCP) and haze line prior are found to be effective for dehazing images. These two methods make use of the Laplacian matrix, which is computationally complex, memory intensive and slow, thus making it impossible to use them on high-resolution (large) images. Multiple strategies have been suggested in the literature to speed up dehazing process by avoiding the Laplacian matrix, but these methods compromise on the quality of dehazing. We propose an effective modular method which divides the input image into blocks and processes each block independently. This makes it possible to use our method for dehazing large images retaining Laplacian matting and thus ensuring the output image quality. This division results in the possibility of assuming local values of atmospheric light. We show that this approach results in better dehazing in the local regions. The effectiveness of the proposed modular architecture is tested also on a learning based method. The output of the modular method is compared with those of different state-of-the-art dehazing methods for multiple quality parameters. Toward this, we have created a dataset of hazy natural outdoor images of large size.