Technology Opportunities

Color-lines used to recover scene transmission based on offset of lines from the origin

Highlights

• Most image dehazing methods remove the layer of haze by recovering the direct scene radiance.
• These methods rely on a physical image formation model that describes the hazy image as a combination between the scene radiance and the atmospheric light.
• In the case of RGB images, the input image supplies only three of the four constraints required to produce optimum results and necessitate supplying additional information about the scene.
• New method produces superior results without the need for additional inputs.

Our Innovation

New method for single-image dehazing that relies on a generic regularity in natural images

where pixels of small image patches typically exhibit a one-dimensional distribution in RGB color space, known as color-lines. Local image formation model uses the color-lines in hazy images to recover the scene transmission based on their offset from the origin.

Key Features

• Algorithm validates its hypothesis and obtains more reliable transmission estimates where possible.
• Unique pixel distribution predicted by model enables identification of patches not exhibiting proper color-lines and discards them.
• Extensive evaluation of this method over different types of images and comparison to state-of-the-art methods over established benchmark images shows consistent improvement in the accuracy of the estimated scene transmission and recovered haze-free radiances.

Development Milestones

• Real-time implementation on various platforms
• Developing application specific user-interface

The Opportunity

• Applications in long-distance photography
• Airborne imaging
• Satellite photography
• Underwater photography
• Security/Surveillance