• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.22 no.4
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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.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.229-234
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• 2020

Dehazing significantly improves image quality by restoring the loss of contrast and color saturation for images taken in the presence. However, when applied to images not taken according to the prior information, dehazing can cause unintended degradation of image quality. To avoid unintended degradations, we present a hazy scene detection algorithm using a single image based on the distributions of hue, saturation, and dark channel. Through a heuristic approach, we find out statistical characteristics of the distribution of hue, saturation, and dark channels in the hazy scene and make a detection model using them. The proposed method can precede the dehazing to prevent unintended degradation. The detection performance evaluated with a set of test images shows a high hit rate with a low false alarm ratio. Ultimately the proposed method can be used to control the effect of dehazing so that the dehazing can be applied to wide variety of images without unintended degradation of image quality.

• 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 Broadcast Engineering
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.159-166
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• 2013

In this paper, we propose a transmission rate compensation method to remove a haze of an image by using edge information of a haze image and image segmentation. With a hazed image, it is difficult not only to recognize objects in the image but also to use an image processing method. One of the famous defogging algorithm named 'Dark Channel Prior'(DCP) is used to predict fog transmission rate using dark area of an image, and eliminates fog from the image. But there is a big possibility to calculate a wrong transmission rate if the area of high RGB values is larger than the area of the reference area. Therefore we eliminate color distortion area to calculate transmission rate by using the propose method, and obtain a natural clean image from a hazed image.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
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• v.5 no.6
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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.

• International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.12 no.2
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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.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.145-151
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• 2014

This paper proposes an image haze removal algorithm for a single image. The conventional Dark Channel Prior(DCP) algorithm estimates a transmission map using the dark information in an image, and the haze regions are then detected using a matting algorithm. However, since the DCP algorithm uses block-based processing, block artifacts are invariably formed in the transmission map. To solve this problem, the proposed algorithm generates a modified transmission map using a Hidden Markov Random Field(HMRF) and Expectation-Maximization(EM) algorithm. Experimental results confirm that the proposed algorithm is superior to conventional algorithms in image haze removal.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.984-987
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• 2019

Recently, autonomous driving technology based on object recognition and lane recognition has attracted attention. However, in foggy weather, haze removal technology is needed because it is difficult to recognize surrounding objects. The technology of removing hazy is currently being studied in many ways, and a single image based haze removal algorithms are typical. In this paper, we design the hardware for haze removal by estimating the hazy partical map. Proposed hardware architecture is designed to have a cumulative histogram based filter that does not affect the hardware size even if the window size of filter increases. The hardware design is implemented with XILINX's xc7z045-ffg900 as the target board.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Broadcast Engineers Conference
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• 2010.07a
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• pp.241-243
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• 2010

Previous approaches to the 2D to 3D conversion problem require heavy computation or considerable amount of user input. In this paper, we propose a rather simple method in estimating the depth map from a single image using a monocular depth cue: haze. Using the haze imaging model, we obtain the distance information and estimate a reliable depth map from a single scenery image. Using the depth map, we also suggest an algorithm that converts the single image to 3D stereoscopic images. We determine a disparity value for each pixel from the original 'left' image and generate a corresponding 'right' image. Results show that the algorithm gives well refined depth maps despite the simplicity of the approach.

• 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.