Efficient Sandstorm Image Color Correction Using Rank-Based Singular Value Recombination

Abstract

Sandstorm images have a color cast that is reddish or yellowish due to the attenuation of the color channel. When light propagates through sand particles, it is scattered. Additionally, if some sand particles have a certain color, the obtained image in this circumstance experiences a color shift because some color channels are attenuated. Therefore, sandstorm images have a symmetrically distributed color cast throughout the image. There have been many studies aiming to enhance sandstorm images. In many studies, to enhance color-casted images, researchers have used the various methods as with gamma correction. However, artificial color shift occurs in an enhanced image because these methods do not reflect the image’s adaptive feature. This paper proposes a sandstorm image enhancement method using singular value recombination based on rank. The singular value of an image reflects the image’s characteristics adaptively, and improved images using the singular values have no artificial color because the balanced image eliminates the degraded color cast. Because the balanced image has hazy or dusty features, the singular value ratio can be used to enhance the image. The enhanced images produced using the proposed method are superior compared to state-of-the-art methods, objectively and subjectively.

Keywords

• sandstorm image enhancement
• singular value decomposition
• rank-based recombined singular value