Hazedefy: A Lightweight Real-Time Image and Video Dehazing Pipeline for Practical Deployment

TL;DR

Hazedefy is a lightweight, real-time image and video dehazing pipeline designed for practical deployment on consumer hardware, improving visibility and contrast without GPU reliance.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel, computationally simple dehazing pipeline optimized for real-time use on mobile and embedded devices, building on the Dark Channel Prior method.

Findings

Effective dehazing on real-world videos and images

Achieves real-time performance on consumer hardware

Improves visibility and contrast without GPU acceleration

Abstract

This paper introduces Hazedefy, a lightweight and application-focused dehazing pipeline intended for real-time video and live camera feed enhancement. Hazedefy prioritizes computational simplicity and practical deployability on consumer-grade hardware, building upon the Dark Channel Prior (DCP) concept and the atmospheric scattering model. Key elements include gamma-adaptive reconstruction, a fast transmission approximation with lower bounds for numerical stability, a stabilized atmospheric light estimator based on fractional top-pixel averaging, and an optional color balance stage. The pipeline is suitable for mobile and embedded applications, as experimental demonstrations on real-world images and videos show improved visibility and contrast without requiring GPU acceleration.