Single image dehazing based on reliability map of dark channel prior

The dark channel prior is generally a powerful prior for single image dehazing, but it is invalid when there are objects which have similar colors to the atmospheric light. It is difficult to find the accurate transmission factor in this case, and thus the results show some color distortion. This paper proposes a new algorithm for the estimation of correct transmission map regardless of object color. The proposed method defines a reliability map that depicts how much the objects or areas meet the dark channel prior assumption, and then estimate the transmission map using the reliable pixels only. The transmission factors at the unreliable pixels are estimated by linear fitting using the reliable neighboring pixels. Experiments show that the dehazed images by the proposed method have less color distortion than the results by the conventional algorithm.