Retinex-Based Visibility Enhancement System during Inclement Weather

A large number of vehicle accidents are caused by low visibility during poor weather conditions, something which impacts human lives around the globe on a daily basis. These accidents could be significantly reduced if a real time visibility enhancement systems were to exist. This work is aimed to improve driver safety in inclement weather but easily can be modified to enhance low vision surveillance videos as well. In this paper, we propose a framework to improve low visibility during bad weather conditions through the use of Retinex, which is an enhancement technique inspired by our own biological vision mechanisms. Retinex is mostly known for its large dynamic range compression while maintaining good color rendition effects at the same time. However, in this work, we are using Retinex for its ability to overcome the loss of background details which occur in low vision scenes and also to reduce the impact of light diminution instances that occur during inclement weather. We will present simulations results under snowstorms of varying visibility degradation.