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Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute

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Abstract

We present an approach to easily remove the effects of haze from images. It is based on the fact that usually airlight scattered by atmospheric particles is partially polarized. Polarization filtering alone cannot remove the haze effects, except in restricted situations. Our method, however, works under a wide range of atmospheric and viewing conditions. We analyze the image formation process, taking into account polarization effects of atmospheric scattering. We then invert the process to enable the removal of haze from images. The method can be used with as few as two images taken through a polarizer at different orientations. This method works instantly, without relying on changes of weather conditions. We present experimental results of complete dehazing in far from ideal conditions for polarization filtering. We obtain a great improvement of scene contrast and correction of color. As a by product, the method also yields a range (depth) map of the scene, and information about properties of the atmospheric particles.

Keywords

dehazing, polarization, scattering, fog, haze

Notes

Associated Center(s) / Consortia: Vision and Autonomous Systems Center

Associated Lab(s) / Group(s): Illumination and Imaging Lab

Number of pages: 8

Text Reference

Yoav Y Schechner, Srinivasa G. Narasimhan, and Shree K Nayar, "Instant Dehazing of Images Using Polarization," Proceedings of the 2001 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, June, 2001, pp. 325 - 332.

BibTeX Reference

@inproceedings{Narasimhan_2001_5041,
   author = "Yoav Y Schechner and Srinivasa G Narasimhan and Shree K Nayar",
   title = "Instant Dehazing of Images Using Polarization",
   booktitle = "Proceedings of the 2001 IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition",
   pages = "325 - 332",
   month = "June",
   year = "2001",
   volume = "1",
}

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