An image quality-aware approach with adaptive scattering coefficients for single image dehazing

Most conventional dehazing methods obtain quality results by solving atmospheric scattering model (ASM) using acquired variables (i.e., global atmospheric light and transmission map). Prior-based strategies have made significant achievements in this task. Nonetheless, they usually obtain unrealistic dehazed images since strong assumptions can barely suit all circumstances. In this paper, we propose a novel image dehazing method with adaptive scattering coefficients to realize visual-friendly and quality-orientated restoration. Specifically, a regional rank-based technique is applied to find the most likely atmospheric light candidate. And then, different from previous image dehazing methods that rely on haze-relevant priors to estimate a transmission map, we develop an image quality-aware approach, together with a dynamic scattering coefficient. In this phase, an optimization function constrained by the image quality-aware indicators is designed to compute the scattering coefficient or transmission. The Fibonacci algorithm is further employed to solve this optimization problem. The proposed method produces high-quality results and exhibits favorable quantitative and qualitative performance compared to related methods.