• 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.