Retinex-Based Framework for Visibility Enhancement During Inclement Weather with Tracking and Estimating Distance of Vehicles

Inclement weather directly impacts the number of vehicle accidents and fatalities, due to low and no-visibility conditions. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, there are more than 1,259,000 crashes each year. On average, 6,000 people are killed, and more than 445,000 people are injured annually due to severe weather conditions. These accidents could be significantly reduced if real-time visibility enhancement systems were made available. However, eliminating the impact of weather conditions on visibility is still lacking and beyond our control. In this paper, the Retinex technique was selected as the framework for developing a system capable of enhancing visibility for drivers. It was selected for its ability to achieve a good dynamic range compression and spectral rendition. Hence, an innovative system is proposed through a multistage framework that not only incorporates a modified Retinex technique but also integrates object detection and depth estimation to overcome some of the current algorithms' and systems' drawbacks. The performance of the proposed system, along with histogram equalization and the basic Retinex enhancement techniques, are presented. The Performance was assessed using Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Structural SIMilarity (SSIM) parameters.