Fast text detection from single hazy image using smart device

Chaitanya Animesh, Sabyasachi Mohanty, Tanima Dutta, Hari Prabhat Gupta

Abstract: Smart devices have enabled massive improvements in road safety applications. Intelligent camera based driver assistance systems have made driving safe and comfortable. The performance of such systems, however, deteriorates in hazy weather conditions due to poor quality images captured by the smart devices. In this paper, we propose a novel framework for fast detection of text regions in a camera captured single hazy image. A novel text extraction technique using the channels of CMYK color space is used. A simple, fast, and efficient approach of using contrast enhancement technique suitable for smart devices is proposed. A maximum weighted matching based grouping approach is used to form words. We have also created a new dataset of hazy images that contains scene texts and manually annotated the words in it. The framework is implemented in different smart devices to show its efficiency.