Sight for sore eyes in image processing: Morpho Dehazer

A company has taken the wraps off its new technology for wiping dust, snow and mist from videos, wrote a CNET contributor in Japan.

Adam Bolton said that while photographic technology already has been able to nullify the red-eye effect, the new video processing tech from Morpho "could be the next big innovation in clearer images."
The company unveiled Morpho Dehazer this month at the Mass-Trans Innovation Japan convention in Chiba, a trade fair that looks at railways technologies.

The company is described as specializing in image processing technology. Morpho was founded by University of Tokyo experts in image processing. The company said that it has built brand recognition in the field of software image processing for mobile devices.

The new solution is called Morpho Dehazer; fundamentally, it removes visually obstructing particles for a clearer image.

Why hone in on a railways technology event for the announcement? Bolton reported that the Dehazer solution is relevant "for mass transit vehicles like trucks and trains—areas such as train platforms, mountain lodges, harbors and highways, where unimpaired monitoring is a high priority."

Considering those environments with snowy mountain areas, storm-affected highways and city pollution, emergency services could work with a clearer view of incidents and they may better respond to traffic re-routing.

Bolton noted potential beyond transportation sectors. "Morpho's Dehazer functionality will eventually come to the consumer world." He said Morpho intends to carry the same technology to autonomous vehicles in the future. This would help ensure a clear, obstruction-free video signal for driverless cars being developed. Other applications, said Bolton, may include home surveillance.

One thing is certain: the quality of visual content is of eminence for today's communication vehicles. Morpho president Masaki Hilaga said today's consumers "expect more from imaging solutions. Being able to capture and preview immediately, edit and share their images with others in the global digital environment is something more and more people expect to be able to do with relatively little effort."

Earlier this month, Morpho also announced MovieSolid, an embedded software program for stabilizing a video, and Morpho Video WDR. The latter is an embedded software program to correct the dynamic range of colors and adjust the brightness of an image.

The company said Morpho Video WDR can estimate the dynamic range of colors from a single image, apply a local tone mapping over the image and correct the brightness from the estimated dynamic range of colors. As predefined parameter settings, there are two modes: natural, close to our perception of colors and "art", more dramatic and artistic.

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