# Equivariant Learning for Unsupervised Image Dehazing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.13986 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.13986/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 20 of its 40 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Jan 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 20 of 20)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00667/) (2022)
- [Vision Transformers for Dense Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13413/) (2021)
- [Benchmarking Single Image Dehazing and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.04143/) (2017)
- [EndoNet: A Deep Architecture for Recognition Tasks on Laparoscopic Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.03012/) (2016)
- [Equivariant Multi-Modality Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.11443/) (2023)
- [Refusion: Enabling Large-Size Realistic Image Restoration with Latent-Space Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08291/) (2023)
- [Equivariant Imaging: Learning Beyond the Range Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14756/) (2021)
- [Cycle-Dehaze: Enhanced CycleGAN for Single Image Dehazing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.05308/) (2018)
- [RIDCP: Revitalizing Real Image Dehazing via High-Quality Codebook Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03994/) (2023)
- [You Only Look Yourself: Unsupervised and Untrained Single Image Dehazing Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.16829/) (2020)
- [Robust Equivariant Imaging: a fully unsupervised framework for learning to image from noisy and partial measurements](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12855/) (2021)
- [Image Fusion via Vision-Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02235/) (2024)
- [UCL-Dehaze: Towards Real-world Image Dehazing via Unsupervised Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.01871/) (2022)
- [Imaging with Equivariant Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.01725/) (2022)
- [Sensing Theorems for Unsupervised Learning in Linear Inverse Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.12513/) (2022)
- [Deep Decomposition Learning for Inverse Imaging Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11028/) (2019)
- [ODCR: Orthogonal Decoupling Contrastive Regularization for Unpaired Image Dehazing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.17825/) (2024)
- [UNSURE: self-supervised learning with Unknown Noise level and Stein's Unbiased Risk Estimate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.01985/) (2024)
- [UR2P-Dehaze: Learning a Simple Image Dehaze Enhancer via Unpaired Rich Physical Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.06818/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Image Dehazing (ID) aims to produce a clear image from an observation contaminated by haze. Current ID methods typically rely on carefully crafted priors or extensive haze-free ground truth, both of which are expensive or impractical to acquire, particularly in the context of scientific imaging. We propose a new unsupervised learning framework called Equivariant Image Dehazing (EID) that exploits the symmetry of image signals to restore clarity to hazy observations. By enforcing haze consistency and systematic equivariance, EID can recover clear patterns directly from raw, hazy images. Additionally, we propose an adversarial learning strategy to model unknown haze physics and facilitate EID learning. Experiments on two scientific image dehazing benchmarks (including cell microscopy and medical endoscopy) and on natural image dehazing have demonstrated that EID significantly outperforms state-of-the-art approaches. By unifying equivariant learning with modelling haze physics, we hope that EID will enable more versatile and effective haze removal in scientific imaging. Code and datasets will be published.