  To evaluate their performance, existing dehazing approaches generally rely on
distance measures between the generated image and its corresponding ground
truth. Despite its ability to produce visually good images, using pixel-based
or even perceptual metrics do not guarantee, in general, that the produced
image is fit for being used as input for low-level computer vision tasks such
as segmentation. To overcome this weakness, we are proposing a novel end-to-end
approach for image dehazing, fit for being used as input to an image
segmentation procedure, while maintaining the visual quality of the generated
images. Inspired by the success of Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN), we
propose to optimize the generator by introducing a discriminator network and a
loss function that evaluates segmentation quality of dehazed images. In
addition, we make use of a supplementary loss function that verifies that the
visual and the perceptual quality of the generated image are preserved in hazy
conditions. Results obtained using the proposed technique are appealing, with a
favorable comparison to state-of-the-art approaches when considering the
performance of segmentation algorithms on the hazy images.
