A foggy image has low contrast and low visibility. Traditional dehazing algorithms suffer from the halo phenomenon and color distortion in image dehazing. In consideration of the characteristics of the atmospheric veil

an image restoration algorithm based on relative total variation is developed in this study. Given that atmospheric scattering light does not affect texture information

the atmospheric veil is estimated accurately according to the main structure and texture information separated by relative total variation. An adaptive protection factor is then utilized to avoid distorting the restored image. Finally

the ideal result is obtained with a physical model

and brightness is adjusted by a curve. Compared with state-of-the-art dehazing methods

the proposed method can avoid halo artifacts or color distortion and can achieve a good dehazing result at distant scenes and in areas where depth changes abruptly. Experimental results show that the proposed method has robust scene adaptability and a fast computing rate because of the linear relation between time complexity and image size.