Generative adversarial network-based atmospheric scattering model for image dehazing

This paper presents a trainable Generative Adversarial Network(GAN)-based end-to-end system for image dehazing,which is named the DehazeGAN.DehazeGAN can be used for edge computing-based applications,such as roadside monitoring.It adopts two networks:one is generator(G),and the other is discriminator(D).The G adopts the U-Net architecture,whose layers are particularly designed to incorporate the atmospheric scattering model of image dehazing.By using a reformulated atmospheric scattering model,the weights of the generator network are initialized by the coarse transmission map,and the biases are adaptively adjusted by using the previous round's trained weights.Since the details may be blurry after the fog is removed,the contrast loss is added to enhance the visibility actively.Aside from the typical GAN adversarial loss,the pixel-wise Mean Square Error(MSE)loss,the contrast loss and the dark channel loss are introduced into the generator loss function.Extensive experiments on benchmark images,the results of which are compared with those of several state-of-the-art methods,demonstrate that the proposed DehazeGAN performs better and is more effective.

Recent Advances in Image Dehazing

Images captured in hazy or foggy weather conditions can be seriously degraded by scattering of atmospheric particles,which reduces the contrast,changes the color,and makes the object features difficult to identify by human vision and by some outdoor computer vision systems.Therefore image dehazing is an important issue and has been widely researched in the field of computer vision.The role of image dehazing is to remove the influence of weather factors in order to improve the visual effects of the image and provide benefit to post-processing.This paper reviews the main techniques of image dehazing that have been developed over the past decade.Firstly,we innovatively divide a number of approaches into three categories:image enhancement based methods,image fusion based methods and image restoration based methods.All methods are analyzed and corresponding sub-categories are introduced according to principles and characteristics.Various quality evaluation methods are then described,sorted and discussed in detail.Finally,research progress is summarized and future research directions are suggested.

Single Image Fog Removal Based on Local Extrema

Atmospheric conditions induced by suspended particles, such as fog and haze, severely alter the scene appearance.In this paper, we propose a novel defogging method based on the local extrema, aiming at improving the image visibility under foggy or hazy weather condition. The proposed method utilizes atmospheric scattering model to realize the fog removal.It applies the local extrema method to figure out three pyramid levels to estimate atmospheric veil, and manipulates the tone and contrast of details at different scales through multi-scale tone manipulation algorithm. The results on the experiments of comparison with traditional methods demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve more accurate restoration for the color and details, resulting in a great improvement in image visibility.