A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW OF SINGLE IMAGE DEHAZING METHODS: FROM CLASSIC PRIORS TO DEEP LEARNING

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35631/JISTM.1144051

Keywords:

Atmospheric Scattering, Domain Generalization, Deep Neural Networks, Image Dehazing

Abstract

Fog and haze not only reduce visibility, but also remove the contrast of the image, mute its colour, and erase the fine texture. Restoring such an image, a task called single image dehazing, has become a standard preprocessing step in many visual channels. In the past decade, handmade prior knowledge and deep learning models have been developed rapidly, but neither of them has solved the problem of reliable dehazing in the real environment. Most investigations remain in a family of methods a priori, transformer, or diffusion models. This review has a broader perspective. It regards a priori based, deep learning and hybrid methods as part of a story, and always focuses on the actual obstacles to deployment. We start with the atmospheric scattering model, which is the physical basis of most recovery frameworks. On this basis, we focus on the development of this field: Handmade prior knowledge, such as dark channel prior knowledge, convolutional network, generative confrontation model, attention-based transformers and diffusion model. In this process, our concerns are often pushed aside by cross domain generalization, the computational cost of edge devices, and the gap between the composite benchmark score and the perceived quality of the real world. Finally, we determined the direction that we should do more work: physical knowledge learning, unsupervised adaptation and lightweight system design. These directions are related to the deployment of infrastructure monitoring, autonomous navigation and public safety, in which reliable dehazing is not optional.

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Published

2026-09-30

How to Cite

Qin , Y., & Ahmad, M. N. (2026). A COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW OF SINGLE IMAGE DEHAZING METHODS: FROM CLASSIC PRIORS TO DEEP LEARNING. JOURNAL INFORMATION AND TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT (JISTM), 11(44), 859–881. https://doi.org/10.35631/JISTM.1144051