Enhance Dehazed Images Rapidly Without Losing Restoration Accuracy

Abstract

We proposed a novel image-enhancing framework to ensure consolidated restoration accuracy when remedying the visual quality of dehazed images, such as over-saturation, color deviation, or luminance issues. Conventionally, the dehazing process was usually considered image restoration; however, enhancement methods only aimed to improve dehazed images' contrast, brightness, and detail. Therefore, the conventional enhancing framework tended to degrade consolidated restoration accuracy due to focusing on low-level image features rather than controlling errors associated with the dehazing process. Our method aimed to improve the consolidated restoration accuracy of the dehazing-and-enhancing process. In experiments, the proposed framework improved the visual quality and preserved restoration accuracy (despite enhancements) with high computational efficiency and resolved quality issues generated by conventional dehazing algorithms. Moreover, the minimal time complexity of the proposed framework is O(n), ensuring practical applicability when implemented in conjunction with state-of-the-art dehazing algorithms.INDEX TERMS dehazing, haze, defogging, fog, haze removal, dark channel, image enhancement, error propagation, edge redundancy.