Abstract: In order to realize real-time static image recovery under hazy weather, a new theory of polarimetric dehazing was presented based on study of the atmospheric scattering model, analyzation on the effects of aerosols and the method of atmospheric scattering correction. The polarimetric information is obtained statically from the original images by Stokes equation and the Muller matrix. The sky region is extracted in real time based on the polarimetric measurement of the hole image. The influence of the range of polarization orientation angle and the threshold of air light intensity are analyzed based on the extraction result. The real time static polarimetric image dehazing method can be realized with fixed linear polarimetric images. No manual operation or subjective evaluation is needed which greatly simplifies the dehazing process. The accuracy of image recovery is increased by solving the problem of the estimation of the global parameters. The real time static polarimetric dehazing method provides a new theoretical and technical way for high-resolution, high stability and real-time image recovery under hazy weather.

Key words: image defogging, atmospheric scattering, aerosol, polarization analysis, image restoration