Haze removal for UAV reconnaissance images using layered scattering model

Abstract

During the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) reconnaissance missions in the middle-low troposphere, the reconnaissance images are blurred and degraded due to the scattering process of aerosol under fog, haze and other weather conditions, which reduce the image contrast and color fidelity. Considering the characteristics of UAV itself, this paper proposes a new algorithm for dehazing UAV reconnaissance images based on layered scattering model. The algorithm starts with the atmosphere scattering model, using the imaging distance, squint angle and other metadata acquired by the UAV. Based on the original model, a layered scattering model for dehazing is proposed. Considering the relationship between wave-length and extinction coefficient, the airlight intensity and extinction coefficient are calculated in the model. Finally, the restored images are obtained. In addition, a classification method based on Bayesian classification is used for classification of haze concentration of the image, avoiding the trouble of manual working. Then we evaluate the haze removal results according to both the subjective and objective criteria. The experimental results show that compared with the origin image, the comprehensive index of the image restored by our method increases by 282.84%, which proves that our method can obtain excellent dehazing effect.