Hazedefy: A Lightweight Real-Time Image and Video Dehazing Pipeline for Practical Deployment

Abstract

This paper introduces Hazedefy, a lightweight and application-focused dehazing pipeline intended for real-time video and live camera feed enhancement. Hazedefy prioritizes computational simplicity and practical deployability on consumer-grade hardware, building upon the Dark Channel Prior (DCP) concept and the atmospheric scattering model. Key elements include gamma-adaptive reconstruction, a fast transmission approximation with lower bounds for numerical stability, a stabilized atmospheric light estimator based on fractional top-pixel averaging, and an optional color balance stage. The pipeline is suitable for mobile and embedded applications, as experimental demonstrations on real-world images and videos show improved visibility and contrast without requiring GPU acceleration.