Fast Single-Image Dehazing Method Based on Luminance Dark Prior

Abstract

Images captured in hazy weather are usually of poor quality, which has a negative effect on the performance of outdoor computer imaging systems. Therefore, haze removal is critical for outdoor imaging applications. In this paper, a quick single-image dehazing method based on a new effective image prior, luminance dark prior, was proposed. This new image prior arose from the observation that most local patches in the luminance image of a haze-free outdoor YUV color space image usually contain pixels of very low intensity, which is similar to the dark channel prior used with HE for RGB images. Using this new prior, a transmission map was used to estimate the thickness of the haze in an image directly from the luminance component of the YUV color image. To obtain a transmission map with a clear edge outline and depth layer of scene objects, a joint filter containing a bilateral filter and Laplacian operator was employed. Experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method unveiled details and recovered vivid colors even in heavily hazy regions, and provided superior visual effects to many other existing methods.