Single Haze Image Restoration under Non-Uniform Dense Scattering Media

We demonstrate an efficient restoration method based on sky segmentation and block optimized transmission (SSBOT) to restore the visibility of single haze image under non-uniform scattering medium. The SSBOT method uses sky region segmentation to determine the haze-opaque region, and estimates the global atmospheric light using quadtree-decomposition. The proposed SSBOT estimates the transmission in every sub-images of the degraded image with dark channel method with coefficient correction. The experimental results show that SSBOT can efficiently restore images degraded by non-uniform dense scattering medium. The proposed method can be used for various security and surveillance applications.