Dynamic Dark Channel Prior Dehazing with Polarization

For traditional dark channel prior (DCP) imaging through haze environments, intensity information acts as the carrier to acquire the reflective character of the dehazed target image. We introduce polarization as auxiliary information into the traditional DCP dehazed process for achieving better imaging performance that can improve target detection or target tracking. In this paper, a polarization imaging system with a split-amplitude structure is designed to enable real-time polarization acquisition of transient scenes. The experimental results show that besides descattering, the proposed method can also simultaneously obtain both light intensity and polarization information from the target. Compared with the traditional DCP method, which only utilizes intensity information as a carrier, a combination of intensity and polarization in the proposed method can effectively detect the target hidden in the background with similar reflectivity. Our investigation has potential application value for optical imaging in scattering environments.