# Real-World Scene Recovery for Scattering-Degraded Images Using Spatial and Frequency Priors

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08254 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.08254/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 19 of its 93 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Dec 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [Benchmarking Single Image Dehazing and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.04143/) (2017)
- [NIMA: Neural Image Assessment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.05424/) (2017)
- [DehazeNet: An End-to-End System for Single Image Haze Removal](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1601.07661/) (2016)
- [An Underwater Image Enhancement Benchmark Dataset and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05495/) (2019)
- [TransWeather: Transformer-based Restoration of Images Degraded by Adverse Weather Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14813/) (2021)
- [AdaIR: Adaptive All-in-One Image Restoration via Frequency Mining and Modulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14614/) (2024)
- [Real-world Underwater Enhancement: Challenges, Benchmarks, and Solutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05320/) (2019)
- [From Synthetic to Real: Image Dehazing Collaborating with Unlabeled Real Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.02934/) (2021)
- [UniRestore: Unified Perceptual and Task-Oriented Image Restoration Model Using Diffusion Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13134/) (2025)
- [Nighttime Dehazing with a Synthetic Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.03864/) (2020)
- [Enhancing Visibility in Nighttime Haze Images Using Guided APSF and Gradient Adaptive Convolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.01738/) (2023)
- [A Semi-supervised Nighttime Dehazing Baseline with Spatial-Frequency Aware and Realistic Brightness Constraint](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.18548/) (2024)
- [Iterative Predictor-Critic Code Decoding for Real-World Image Dehazing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13147/) (2025)
- [Real-World Remote Sensing Image Dehazing: Benchmark and Baseline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17966/) (2025)
- [Rank-One Prior: Toward Real-Time Scene Recovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.17126/) (2021)
- [CoA: Towards Real Image Dehazing via Compression-and-Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.05590/) (2025)
- [Real-Time Multi-Scene Visibility Enhancement for Promoting Navigational Safety of Vessels Under Complex Weather Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.01500/) (2024)
- [AoSRNet: All-in-One Scene Recovery Networks via Multi-knowledge Integration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03738/) (2024)
- [Dual High-Order Total Variation Model for Underwater Image Restoration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.14868/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Scene recovery from real-world images degraded by scattering effects, such as haze, sandstorm, underwater, and remote sensing conditions, remains a fundamental yet challenging problem in computer vision. Existing methods either rely on a single prior, which is inherently insufficient to characterize diverse scattering degradations, or employ deep networks trained on synthetic data, which often suffer from limited generalization to real-world scenarios. In this paper, we propose Spatial and Frequency Priors (SFP) for real-world scene recovery under scattering-induced degradations. In the spatial domain, we observe that the inverse of a scattering-degraded image reveals a projection along its spectral direction that correlates with the underlying scene transmission. Based on this observation, a spatial prior is formulated to estimate the transmission map, enabling effective recovery of scene radiance under scattering effects. In the frequency domain, we design an adaptive frequency enhancement strategy guided by two novel priors. The first prior assumes that the mean intensity of the direct current (DC) components across channels in degraded images approximates that of the corresponding clear images. The second prior is based on the observation that, in clear images, low radial frequencies within a narrow band contribute only a small proportion of the overall spectrum. These priors enable targeted compensation for scattering-induced attenuation across different frequency bands. Finally, a weighted fusion of the spatial and frequency domain results is performed to obtain the final recovered image. Extensive experiments on diverse real-world scattering-degraded scenarios verify that our SFP achieves superior performance and strong generalization capability compared to state-of-the-art methods.