COLOR IMAGE DEHAZING USING THE NEAR-INFRARED

In landscape photography, distant objects often appear blurred with a blue color cast, a degradation caused by atmospheric haze. To enhance image contrast, pleasantness and information content, dehazing can be performed. We propose that fusing a visible and an near-infrared (NIR) image of the same scene results in a dehazed color image without the need for haze or airlight detection or the generation of depth maps. This is achieved through a multiresolution approach using edge-preserving filtering to minimize artifacts. The near-infrared part of the spectrum is easy to acquire with normal digital cameras. The NIR images are generally devoid of haze as it is an inherent function of the wavelengths. Experiments on real images validate our approach.