SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CORRECTING OUTDOOR IMAGES FOR ATMOSPHERIC HAZE DISTORTION

摘要

Outdoor imaging is plagued by poor visibility conditions due to atmospheric scattering, particularly in haze. A major problem is spatially-varying reduction of contrast by stray radiance (airlight), which is scattered by the haze particles towards the camera. The images can be compensated for haze by subtraction of the airlight and correcting for atmospheric attenuation. Airlight and attenuation parameters are computed by analyzing polarization-filtered images. These parameters were estimated in past studies by measuring pixels in sky areas. However, the sky is often unseen in the field of view. The invention provides methods for automatically estimating these parameters, when the sky is not in view.