{B.K. Panigrahi Tapan Kumar Gandhi Sidharth Gautam}

Abstract

Hazy environment attenuates the scene radiance andcauses difficulty in distinguishing the color and texture of the scene.A crucial step in dehazing is the recovery of the global air-lightvector. Traditional methods usually interpret the RGB value ofthe brightest region in haze images as the air-light. In this letter,a new prior called ‘color constancy prior’ has been proposed toimprove the robustness of air-light estimation when varicoloredillumination exists.The prior utilizes the statistical observation thatdistant scenery objects become the most haze-opaque due to thepixel escalation towards the higher intensity side. The comparativeevaluation on a variety of haze images manifests that the proposedprior perform better than existing air-light recovery methods andcan be used for subsequent dehazing applications.