title: A Retina Inspired Model for Enhancing Visibility of Hazy Images.
abstract: The mammalian retina seems far smarter than scientists have believed so far. Inspired by the visual processing mechanisms in the retina, from the layer of photoreceptors to the layer of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs), we propose a computational model for haze removal from a single input image, which is an important issue in the field of image enhancement. In particular, the bipolar cells serve to roughly remove the low-frequency of haze, and the amacrine cells modulate the output of cone bipolar cells to compensate the loss of details by increasing the image contrast. Then the RGCs with disinhibitory receptive field surround refine the local haze removal as well as the image detail enhancement. Results on a variety of real-world and synthetic hazy images show that the proposed model yields results comparative to or even better than the state-of-the-art methods, having the advantage of simultaneous dehazing and enhancing of single hazy image with simple and straightforward implementation.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China Chengdu, China.
authors.forename: Xian-Shi
authors.initials: XS
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China Chengdu, China.
authors.forename: Shao-Bing
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of ChinaChengdu, China; Center for Life Sciences, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of SciencesShanghai, China.
authors.forename: Chao-Yi
authors.initials: CY
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Neuroinformation of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China Chengdu, China.
authors.forename: Yong-Jie
authors.initials: YJ
authors.lastname: Li
keywords: disinhibitory effect; haze removal; non-classical receptive field; retina inspired model; retinal ganglion cell