Dehazing with Offset Correction and a Weighted Residual Map

Abstract

In hazy environments, image quality is degraded by haze and the degraded photos have reduced visibility, making the less vivid and visually attractive. This paper proposes a method for recovering image information from a single hazy image. The dark channel prior algorithm tends to underestimate the transmission of bright areas. To address this problem, an improved dehazing algorithm is proposed in this paper. Assuming that intensity in a dark channel affected by haze produces the same offset, the expected value of the dark channel of a hazy image is used as an approximation of this offset to correct the transmission. However, this correction may neglect scene difference and affect the clarity of the recovered images. Therefore, a weighted residual map is used to enhance contrast and recover more information. Experimental results demonstrate that our algorithm can effectively lessen color oversaturation and restore images with enhanced details. This algorithm provides a more accurate transmission estimation method that can be used with a weighted residual map to eliminate haze and improve contrast.