Inter-region linear smoothing function for foggy and hazy images

In foggy and misty weather conditions, the contrast and color of images degrade. These degradation occur due to the attenuation of light and presence of air-light, light reflected from fog particles. Attenuation reduces the contrast and air-light increases the whiteness in the image. In this paper, a novel and efficient fog removal algorithm is proposed. The algorithm uses white color balancing with inter smoothing for the estimation of air-light and restore fog free image. The proposed algorithm, unlike some other methods, is independent from the intensity of fog and does not require user intervention. Qualitative and quantitative analysis demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the state of art methods.