• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.339-348
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• 2015

In this paper, we propose improved night visibility enhancement algorithm based on haze removal method. The proposed method uses new haze removal method in place of the conventional methods. Our night visibility enhancement method is very good and faster than traditional methods. This method also uses additionally local histogram equalization for sharpening the enhanced image. Our method can be applied to any application that uses a visible light camera, and it is appropriate to apply a black box, vehicle camera, and cell phone camera, since it is possible that real-time processing.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.738-747
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• 2015

It is difficult to use a recognition algorithm of an image in a foggy environment because the color and edge information is removed. One of the famous defogging algorithm is haze removal by using 'Dark Channel Prior(DCP)' which is used to predict for transmission rate using color information of an image and eliminates fog from the image. However, in case that the image has factors such as sunset or yellow dust, there is overemphasized problem on the color of certain channel after haze removal. Furthermore, in case that the image includes an object containing high RGB channel, the transmission related to this area causes a misestimated issue. In this paper, we purpose an enhanced fog elimination algorithm by using improved color normalization and haze rate revision which correct mis-estimation haze area on the basis of color information and edge information of an image. By eliminating the color distortion, we can obtain more natural clean image from the haze image.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.59 no.2
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• pp.457-464
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• 2010

The haze removal algorithm using dark channel prior, which was proposed by He et al., is an efficient algorithm and presents impressive results. But its high memory and computational requirements limit its applications. In this paper, we propose a method to improve the memory usage and calculation speed. We notice that the matting process accounts for most calculation time, so we replace the matting process with a fast bilateral filtering scheme. Using the bilateral filter, we can reduce the memory usage, but its computational complexity is still high. To reduce the computational complexity as well, we adapt a hierarchical structure for the bilateral filtering. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can remove haze in a picture effectively, while requiring much less computations than the He et al.'s method.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.770-781
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• 2016

As a result of reducing color information and edge information, object distinction in haze image occurs with difficulty. One of the famous defogging algorithm is haze removal by using 'Dark Channel Prior(DCP)', which is used to predict for transmission rate using color information of an image and eliminates haze from the image. But, In case that haze rate is estimated under color information, there is a miscalculated issue which is posed by haze rate and transmission in area with high brightness such as a white object or a light source. In this paper, We deal with a miscalculated issue by correcting from around haze rate, after application of color normalization used by main white part of image haze. Moreover, We calculation improved transmission based on the result of improved haze rate estimation. And then haze image quality is developed through refining transmission.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.11
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• pp.31-37
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• 2018

This paper proposes an effective single-image haze-removal algorithm with low complexity by using a dual dark channel prior (DCP) and an adaptive brightness correction technique. The dark channel of a small patch preserves the edge information of the image, but is sensitive to noise and local brightness variations. On the other hand, the dark channel of a large patch is advantageous in estimation of the exact haze value, but halo effects from block effects deteriorate haze-removal performance. In order to solve this problem, the proposed algorithm builds a dual DCP as a combination of dark channels from patches with different sizes, and this meets low-memory and low-complexity requirements, while the conventional method uses a matting technique, which requires a large amount of memory and heavy computations. Moreover, an adaptive brightness correction technique that is applied to the recovered image preserves the objects in the image more clearly. Experimental results for various hazy images demonstrate that the proposed algorithm removes haze effectively, while requiring much fewer computations and less memory than conventional methods.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.11
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• pp.165-173
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• 2014

This paper presents a fast and high-quality haze removal method by the modification of the conventional transmission estimation process. In the conventional haze removal method, the halo and blocking artifacts arises while estimating the transmission. In order to effectively reduce the artifacts, the proposed method employs the maximum filter after the calculation of the dark channel. Because of the reduction of the artifacts, the proposed method can simplify the transmission refinement process without sacrificing the quality of the results: this paper proposes to use the single-channel guided filter instead of the multi-channel guided filter. The experimental results demonstrate that the quality of the dehazed results by the proposed transmission correction process is improved and the haze removal speed is increased by up to 59.6%, when compared to the conventional ones.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.492-496
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• 2020

The visibility deteriorates in hazy weather and it is difficult to accurately recognize information captured by the camera. Research is being actively conducted to remove haze so that camera-based applications such as object localization/detection and lane recognition can operate normally even in hazy weather. In this paper, we propose a nonlinear model for depth map estimation through an extensive analysis that the difference between brightness and saturation in hazy image increases non-linearly with the depth of the image. The quantitative evaluation(MSE, SSIM, TMQI) shows that the proposed haze removal method based on the nonlinear model is superior to other state-of-the-art methods.

• Journal of Broadcast Engineering
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.697-705
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• 2015

This paper proposes a high-speed and high-quality haze removal method based on dual dark channels. In the conventional method, the halo artifacts are suppressed by the additional transmission refinement, but the transmission refinement is computationally intensive and the quality of the haze removal is sometimes unsatisfactory because of the residual halo artifacts. In the proposed method, the transmission is estimated with the mixture of the two dark channels with different window size. By mixing the two dark channels so as to avoid the halo artifacts, the proposed method realizes a high-quality haze removal even without the transmission refinement. Experimental results demonstrate that the quality of the results by the proposed method is superior to those by the conventional method and the speed of the haze removal is about 14.2 times higher than that of the conventional method.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.634-638
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• 2018

Haze is a factor that degrades the performance of various image processing algorithms, such as those for detection, tracking, and recognition using an electro-optical sensor. For robust operation of an electro-optical sensor-based unmanned system used outdoors, an algorithm capable of effectively removing haze is needed. As a haze removal method using a single electro-optical sensor, the dark channel prior using statistical properties of the electro-optical sensor is most widely known. Previous methods used a square filter in the process of obtaining a transmission using the dark channel prior. When a square filter is used, the effect of removing haze becomes smaller as the size of the filter becomes larger. When the size of the filter becomes excessively small, over-saturation occurs, and color information in the image is lost. Since the size of the filter greatly affects the performance of the algorithm, a relatively large filter is generally used, or a small filter is used so that no over-saturation occurs, depending on the image. In this paper, we propose an improved haze removal method using color image segmentation. The parameters of the color image segmentation are automatically set according to the information complexity of the image, and the over-saturation phenomenon does not occur by estimating the amount of transmission based on the parameters.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.19 no.7
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• pp.9-16
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• 2014

Since the haze removal algorithm using dark channel prior was introduced, many researches for improving processing speed have been addressed even if it presented impressive results. Remarkable one is using median dark channel prior. Although it has been considered as a very attactive method, processing speed is as low as ever. So, a parallel memory model which is suitable for SIMD architecture processing haze removal on high-definition images in high-speed is introduced in this paper. The proposed parallel memory model allows to access n pixels simultaneously. It is also support stride 3, 5, 7, and 11 in order to execute convolution mask operations, e.g., median filter. The proposed parallel memory model can therefore support enough data bandwidth to process the algorithm using median dark channel prior in high-speed.