Infrared image dehazing based on hierarchical subdivision superpixels and information integrity prior

Hazy weather degrades the contrast and visual quality of infrared imaging systems due to the presence of suspended particles. Most existing dehazing methods focus on enhancing global contrast or exploit a local grid transmission estimation strategy on images,which may lead to loss of information,halo artifacts and distortion in sky region. To address these problems,a novel single image dehazing model based on superpixel structure decom. position and information integrity protection is proposed. In this model,based on the local structure information, the image is first adaptively divided into multiple objective regions using a hierarchical superpixel algorithm to eliminate halo artifacts. Meanwhile,to avoid the error estimate caused by the local highlighted targets,a modi. fied quadtree subdivision based on superpixel blocks is applied to obtain the global atmospheric light. Further. more,a combined constraint is used to optimize the transmission map by minimizing the loss of information. Compared with state- of-the-art methods in terms of qualitative and quantitative analysis,experiments on realworld hazy infrared images demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method in both contrast and visibility.