Turbidity-adaptive underwater image enhancement method using image fusion

Abstract

Clear, correct imaging is a prerequisite for underwater operations. In real freshwater environment including rivers and lakes, the water bodies are usually turbid and dynamic, which brings extra troubles to quality of imaging due to color deviation and suspended particulate. Most of the existing underwater imaging methods focus on relatively clear underwater environment, it is uncertain that if those methods can work well in turbid and dynamic underwater environments. In this paper, we propose a turbidity-adaptive underwater image enhancement method. To deal with attenuation and scattering of varying degree, the turbidity is detected by the histogram of images. Based on the detection result, different image enhancement strategies are designed to deal with the problem of color deviation and blurring. The proposed method is verified by an underwater image dataset captured in real underwater environment. The result is evaluated by image metrics including structure similarity index measure, underwater color image quality evaluation metric, and speeded-up robust features. Test results exhibit that the method can correct the color deviation and improve the quality of underwater images.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

turbidity / underwater image enhancement / image fusion / underwater robots / visibility

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