• 한국멀티미디어학회논문지
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• 제25권9호
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• pp.1266-1272
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• 2022

With the recent development of computer vision technology, image processing-based mechanical devices are being developed to realize autonomous driving. The camera-taken images of image processing-based machines are invisible due to scattering and absorption of light in foggy conditions. This lowers the object recognition rate and causes malfunction. The safety of the technology is very important because the malfunction of autonomous driving leads to human casualties. In order to increase the stability of the technology, it is necessary to apply an efficient haze removal algorithm to the camera. In the conventional haze removal method, since the haze removal operation is performed regardless of the haze concentration of the input image, excessive haze is removed and the quality of the resulting image is deteriorated. In this paper, we propose an automatic haze removal method that removes haze according to the haze density of the input image by applying Ngo's Haziness Degree Evaluator (HDE) to Kim's haze removal algorithm using Hazy Particle Map. The proposed haze removal method removes the haze according to the haze concentration of the input image, thereby preventing the quality degradation of the input image that does not require haze removal and solving the problem of excessive haze removal. The superiority of the proposed haze removal method is verified through qualitative and quantitative evaluation.

• 한국멀티미디어학회논문지
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• 제20권1호
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• pp.32-42
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• 2017

This paper proposes a new haze removal method for moving image sequence. Since the conventional dark channel prior haze removal method adjusts each color component separately in RGB color space, there can be severe color distortion in the haze removed output image. In order to resolve this problem, this paper proposes a new haze removal scheme that adjusts luminance and saturation components in HLS color space while retaining hue component. Also the conventional dark channel prior haze removal method is developed to obtain best haze removal performance for a single image. Therefore, if it is applied to a moving image sequence, the estimated parameter values change rapidly and the haze removed output image sequence shows unnatural glitter defects. To overcome this problem, a new parameter estimation method using Kalman filter is proposed for moving image sequence. Experimental results demonstrate that the haze removal performance of the proposed method is better than that of the conventional dark channel prior method.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• 제5권6호
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• pp.390-394
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• 2016

This paper presents a new comparison method for haze-removal algorithms in next-generation automotive systems. Compared to previous peak signal-to-noise ratio-based comparisons, which measure similarity, the proposed modulation transfer function-based method checks sharpness to select a more suitable haze-removal algorithm for lane detection. Among the practical filtering schemes used for a haze-removal algorithm, experimental results show that Gaussian filtering effectively preserves the sharpness of road images, enhancing lane detection accuracy.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• 제20권3호
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• pp.212-218
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• 2022

The performance of vision-based intelligent systems, such as self-driving cars and unmanned aerial vehicles, is subject to weather conditions, notably the frequently encountered haze or fog. As a result, studies on haze removal have garnered increasing interest from academia and industry. This paper hereby presents a 4K-capable hardware implementation of an efficient haze removal algorithm with the following two improvements. First, the depth-dependent haze distribution is predicted using a linear model of four haze-relevant features, where the model parameters are obtained through maximum likelihood estimates. Second, the approximated quad-decomposition method is adopted to estimate the atmospheric light. Extensive experimental results then follow to verify the efficacy of the proposed algorithm against well-known benchmark methods. For real-time processing, this paper also presents a pipelined architecture comprised of customized macros, such as split multipliers, parallel dividers, and serial dividers. The implementation results demonstrated that the proposed hardware design can handle DCI 4K videos at 30.8 frames per second.

• 전기전자학회논문지
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• 제22권4호
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• pp.948-952
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• 2018

Haze removal is an object of scientific desire due to its various practical applications. Existing algorithms are founded upon histogram equalization, contrast maximization, or the growing trend of applying machine learning in image processing. Since machine learning-based algorithms solve problems based on the data, they usually perform better than those based on traditional image processing/computer vision techniques. However, to achieve such a high performance, one of the requisites is a large and reliable training database, which seems to be unattainable owing to the complexity of real hazy and haze-free images acquisition. As a result, researchers are currently using the synthetic database, obtained by introducing the synthetic haze drawn from the standard uniform distribution into the clear images. In this paper, we propose the enhanced equidistribution, improving upon our previous study on equidistribution, and use it to make a new database for training machine learning-based haze removal algorithms. A large number of experiments verify the effectiveness of our proposed methodology.

• 한국멀티미디어학회논문지
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• 제19권1호
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• pp.10-21
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• 2016

Images taken from outdoor are degraded quality by fog or haze, etc. In this paper, we propose a method that provides the visibility improved images through fog or haze removal. We proposed haze removal method that uses brightness transform based on atmospheric scatter coefficient rate with local histogram equalization. To calculate the transmission rate that indicate fog rate in original image, we use atmospheric scatter coefficient rate based on quadratic equations about haze model. And primary brightness transformed image can be obtained by using the obtained transmission rate. Also we use local histogram equalization with proposed brightness transform for effectively image visibility enhancement. Unlike existing methods, our method can process real-time with stable and effect image visibility enhancement. Proposed method use only the luminance images processed by good performance surveillance systems because it represents the real-time processing is required, black-box, digital camera and multimedia equipment is applicable. Also because it shows good performance only with the luminance images processed, Surveillance systems, black boxes, digital cameras, and multimedia devices etc, that require real-time processing can be applied.

• 한국정보통신학회논문지
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• 제26권10호
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• pp.1477-1482
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• 2022

안개는 매우 작은 물방울이 대기 중에 떠돌아다니는 국지적인 기상현상으로 지역에 따라 안개 양과 특성이 다를 수도 있다. 특히 이러한 안개로 인해 가시거리가 줄어들어 항공 교통 방해와 차량 교통사고를 유발할 수 있으며, 보안용 CCTV 등 의 화질을 저하시킨다. 따라서 최근 10년간 안개로 인한 피해를 줄이기 위해 안개제거 연구가 활발히 진행되고 있다. 본 연구에서는 안개가 없을 경우, 안개가 고르게 분포한 경우, 그리고 안개가 국지적으로 다른 경우에 적응적으로 대응할 수 있도록 흐릿함 농도 평가기를 이용한 가중치 생성을 통해 국부적인 안개 제거를 수행한다. 그리고 입력 영상에 안개가 있다고 가정하고 안개를 제거하는 기존의 정적인 방식의 안개제거 방법의 한계점을 개선시킨다. 또한 벤치마크 알고리즘과의 정량 및 정성적 성능 평가를 통해 제안하는 방법의 우수성을 증명한다.

• 전기전자학회논문지
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• 제23권3호
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• pp.984-987
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• 2019

최근 사물인식, 차선인식을 기반한 자율 주행 기술이 각광받고 있다. 하지만 안개가 자욱한 날씨에는 주변 사물을 인지하기 어렵기 때문에 안개제거 기술이 필요하다. 안개 제거 기술은 현재 여러 방면으로 연구되고 있으며, 단일 영상을 기반한 안개제거 알고리즘이 대표적이다. 본 논문에서는 안개 입자 맵을 추정하여 실시간으로 안개 제거를 하기 위한 하드웨어를 설계한다. 제안하는 하드웨어 구조는 누적 히스토그램 방식을 기반한 필터를 구현하여 필터의 window 크기가 커져도 하드웨어 크기에 영향을 미치지 않는 구조를 가진다. 하드웨어 설계는 XILINX사의 xc7z045-ffg900을 목표 보드로 하여 FPGA 구현을 했다.

• 전기전자학회논문지
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• 제25권1호
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• pp.83-87
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• 2021

자율주행 및 인공지능 CCTV는 안개와 같은 악조건 상황에서 주변의 사물과 사람인식에 대한 카메라의 가시성 및 검출 능력이 저하된다. 이러한 악조건 상황에서도 중요한 정보를 정확하게 얻기 위해서 안개 제거 알고리즘에 대한 연구가 필요하다. 과거부터 현재까지 안개 제거 기술은 컴퓨터 비전/ 데이터 기반 등 다양한 방법을 이용한 연구가 진행되고 있다. 안개 제거 기술 중에서 입력영상에 대한 깊이 정보를 통한 안개 전달량을 추정하는 방법이 중요하다. 본 논문에서는 영상의 특징 DCP, saturation∗value, sharpness가 깊이정보와 선형관계에 있다는 가정을 통해 선형모델을 제시한다. 제안한 선형모델을 통한 안개제거방법은 기존의 방법들과 정량적 수치평가에서 평균적으로 10% 향상된 결과를 보여주며 알고리즘의 성능의 우수성을 증명하였다.

• International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• 제12권2호
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• pp.21-29
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• 2020

This paper presents an effective single image haze removal using edge-preserving and adaptive transmission estimation to enhance the visibility of outdoor images vulnerable to weather and environmental conditions with computational complexity reduction. The conventional methods involve the time-consuming refinement process. The proposed transmission estimation however does not require the refinement, since it preserves the edges effectively, which selects one between the pixel-based dark channel and the patch-based dark channel in the vicinity of edges. Moreover, we propose an adaptive transmission estimation to improve the visual quality particularly in bright areas like sky. Experimental results with various hazy images represent that the proposed method is superior to the conventional methods in both subjective visual quality and computational complexity. The proposed method can be adopted to compose a haze removal module for realtime devices such as mobile devices, digital cameras, autonomous vehicles, and so on as well as PCs that have enough processing resources.