Infrared traffic image enhancement algorithm based on dark channel prior and gamma correction

Abstract

The infrared traffic image acquired by the intelligent traffic surveillance equipment has low contrast, little hierarchical differences in perceptions of image and the blurred vision effect. Therefore, infrared traffic image enhancement, being an indispensable key step, is applied to nearly all infrared imaging based traffic engineering applications. In this paper, we propose an infrared traffic image enhancement algorithm that is based on dark channel prior and gamma correction. In existing research dark channel prior, known as a famous image dehazing method, here is used to do infrared image enhancement for the first time. Initially, in the proposed algorithm, the original degraded infrared traffic image is transformed with dark channel prior as the initial enhanced result. A further adjustment based on the gamma curve is needed because initial enhanced result has lower brightness. Comprehensive validation experiments reveal that the proposed algorithm outperforms the current state-of-the-art algorithms.