Fast Single Image Dehazing Using Saturation Based Transmission Map Estimation

Single image dehazing has been a challenging problem because of its ill-posed nature. For this reason, numerous efforts have been made in the field of haze removal. This paper proposes a simple, fast, and powerful algorithm for haze removal. The medium transmission is derived as a function of the saturation of the scene radiance only, and the saturation of scene radiance is estimated using a simple stretching method. A different medium transmission can be estimated for each pixel because this method does not assume that transmission is constant in a small patch. Furthermore, this paper presents a color veil removing algorithm, which is useful for an image with fine or yellow dust, using the white balance technique. The proposed algorithm requires no training, prior, and refinement process. The simulation results show that the proposed dehazing scheme outperforms state-of-the-art dehazing approaches in terms of both computational complexity and dehazing efficiency.