Enhancement of Atmospherically Degraded Images Using Color Analysis

In this paper, we present an image enhancement method for atmospherically degraded images using atmospheric light and transmission based on color analysis. We first generate a normalized image using maximum value of each RGB color channel. Then, each atmospheric light is estimated from RGB color channel respectively by calculating reflectance of an image. We also, generate a transmission using gamma coefficients from the Y channel of the image. We can significantly enhance the visibility of an image by using the estimated atmospheric light and the transmission. The proposed algorithm can remove atmospheric degradation components better than existing techniques because the color prevents color distortion which is common problem of existing techniques. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can improve visibility be removing fog, smoke, and dust.