Nighttime image haze removal and enhancement based on improved atmospheric scattering model

In this work, we tackle the problem of nighttime image degradation caused by haze and weak illumination. We propose an improved atmospheric scattering model which can achieve single image haze removal and enhancement simultaneously. The input image firstly is decomposed into the structure layer and the texture layer based on the image total variation model. The structure layer contains the main scenes of original image including the haze and brightness, and the texture layer contains the detail and noise. In order to avoid the influence of the glow and multiple light sources on the estimation of atmospheric map, the glow layer then is stripped from the structure layer and the background layer can be calculated. Followed by performing the estimation method of atmospheric map and transmission we proposed, the structure layer can be restored according to the atmospheric scattering model. We finally fuse the restored background layer and optimized texture to obtain the haze-free and enhanced image. Experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed model.