High-Quality Image Dehazing with a Diffusion Model

Khái niệm cốt lõi

A DDPM-based and physics-aware image dehazing framework that can effectively restore high-quality images from complex hazy scenes by combining physical modeling and the strong generation ability of diffusion models.

Tóm tắt

The paper proposes a two-stage image dehazing framework called DehazeDDPM that combines physical modeling and diffusion models to tackle the challenging dense-haze image dehazing task.

In the first stage, the physical modeling network estimates the transmission map, haze-free image, and atmospheric light based on the Atmospheric Scattering Model (ASM). This pulls the distribution of the hazy data closer to that of the clear data and endows DehazeDDPM with fog-aware ability.

In the second stage, the conditional DDPM exploits its strong generation ability to compensate for the haze-induced information loss, working in conjunction with the physical modeling. The transmission map from the first stage is used as a confidence map to guide the learning of the second stage, mitigating the difficulty of DDPM for image dehazing.

Additionally, a frequency prior optimization strategy is introduced to better recover the high-frequency details. Extensive experiments demonstrate that DehazeDDPM achieves state-of-the-art performance on both synthetic and real-world hazy datasets, with much better perceptual quality on complex real-world scenes.

Thống kê

The average entropy of hazy images is much smaller than that of clear images, indicating haze-induced information loss.
The t-SNE visualization and Wasserstein distance show a large distribution difference between clear and hazy images.

Trích dẫn

"Dense-haze corresponds to small transmission map value and less original information."
"The recently emerged Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Model (DDPM) exhibits strong generation ability, showing potential for solving this problem. However, DDPM fails to consider the physics property of dehazing task, limiting its information completion capacity."

Thông tin chi tiết chính được chắt lọc từ

High-quality Image Dehazing with Diffusion Model

by Hu Yu,Jie Hu... lúc arxiv.org 04-16-2024

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2308.11949.pdf

Yêu cầu sâu hơn

How can the proposed DehazeDDPM framework be extended to handle other low-level vision tasks beyond image dehazing

The DehazeDDPM framework can be extended to handle other low-level vision tasks beyond image dehazing by adapting the conditional generative modeling approach to different tasks. One way to do this is by modifying the physical modeling stage to suit the specific characteristics of the new task. For example, for image super-resolution, the physical modeling stage could focus on understanding the relationship between low-resolution and high-resolution images. Additionally, the fog-aware and distribution-closer conditions can be adjusted to account for the unique challenges of the new task. By customizing these stages to the requirements of different low-level vision tasks, DehazeDDPM can be effectively applied to a variety of image enhancement tasks.

What are the potential limitations of the current diffusion model-based approach, and how can they be addressed in future research

One potential limitation of the current diffusion model-based approach is the computational complexity and training time required for large-scale datasets. Diffusion models can be computationally intensive, especially when dealing with high-resolution images or complex scenes. To address this limitation, future research could focus on optimizing the training process of diffusion models, exploring techniques such as parallel processing, model distillation, or transfer learning to improve efficiency. Additionally, the interpretability of diffusion models can be challenging, and efforts to enhance the explainability of the model's decisions could improve its usability in practical applications.

Given the importance of large-scale real-world datasets for advancing image dehazing research, what are some promising directions for creating and curating such datasets

Creating and curating large-scale real-world datasets for image dehazing research is crucial for advancing the field. One promising direction for dataset creation is to collaborate with industry partners or government agencies to collect diverse and challenging hazy images from surveillance systems, autonomous vehicles, or environmental monitoring devices. These partnerships can provide access to unique and real-world hazy scenes that are essential for training and evaluating image dehazing algorithms. Additionally, crowdsourcing platforms can be utilized to gather a wide range of hazy images captured by individuals in different locations and under various weather conditions. By leveraging these strategies, researchers can build comprehensive datasets that reflect the complexity and variability of real-world hazy scenarios.