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A comparative study of single image fog removal methods

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Abstract

The presence of fog degrades visibility in natural scene conditions. Computer vision applications like navigation, tracking, and surveillance need clear atmospheric images or videos as prerequisites for optimal performance. However, foggy atmosphere creates problems for computer vision applications due to reduced visibility. Different fog removal techniques are used to improve the visual quality of images and videos. The fog density depends on the depth information. Scene depth information estimation needs multiple images, which limits its real-life application. Hence, a single image fog removal requires some prior knowledge and/or assumptions to get the depth information. In this paper, the recent fog removal techniques are grouped into three broad categories: (1) filter-based methods, (2) color correction based methods, and (3) learning-based methods, for ease of understanding. The primary objective is to provide an introduction to this field and compare performance (both qualitative and quantitative) of representative techniques for each category. It is found that filter-based methods are doing overall better compared to other categories.

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Notes

  1. https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/weather/q1_roadimpact.htm.

  2. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/over-10000-lives-lost-in-fog-related-road-crashes/articleshow/67391588.cms.

  3. https://sites.google.com/view/more-results/a-comparative-study-on-fog-removal-from-single-image.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank A.K. Tripathi, Zhengguo Li, Bolun Cai, Boyi Li, Runde Li, and Se-Eun Kim for sharing their fog removal codes.

Funding

The first and third authors are getting research scholar fellowship and salary under the employment of Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India. The second author worked on this while at IIT Kharagpur and was not funded by any university or agency. This study is not funded by any other agency.

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  1. Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India

    Bijaylaxmi Das, Joshua Peter Ebenezer & Sudipta Mukhopadhyay

  2. The University of Texas, Austin, USA

    Joshua Peter Ebenezer

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  1. Bijaylaxmi Das
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Correspondence to Sudipta Mukhopadhyay.

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Das, B., Ebenezer, J.P. & Mukhopadhyay, S. A comparative study of single image fog removal methods. Vis Comput 38, 179–195 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00371-020-02010-4

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