A Principal Component Based Haze Masking Method for Visible Images

Land surfaces are commonly obstructed by haze in remote sensing images, which reduces the available land cover information. Haze detection is therefore important for locating, avoiding, or restoring hazy regions. In this letter, a principal component (PC)-based haze masking (PCHM) method is developed for the masking of haze in visible remote sensing images covering land surfaces at middle latitudes. Owing to the evidence of haze in the second PC, the PCHM method results in accurate haze masks. The complete procedure comprises two steps: haze construction and spatial optimization. The validity of the PCHM method is demonstrated through its application to several hazy visible images clipped from Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus scenes. The quantitative assessments verify the superiority of the proposed method over the haze optimized transformation method for the production of binary haze masks. In addition, the resulting haze masks are compared with a MODIS cloud product, which further proves the necessity and validity of the proposed method.